How does forkIO and par interact?

[Marcus D. Gabriel]

Thanks Bulat.  What you wrote makes perfect sense to me.  However under
6.10.4
this is what I observed.  Pseudo code:

    c = l++r `demanding` l>||r

then

    th <- forkIO (c `seq` return ())

Run it the first time to completion and watch two cores turn at better
than 95% utilisation, quite pleasing.  Run it the second time and half
way through the calculation use

    killThread th

and watch one core become idle and one core turn at better than 95%.
Wait until the first core finishes and then use c and watch the rest
of the calculation finish.

Now, what you wrote and this experiment tells me that l was sparked
and then given a free thread in which to calculate.  r was still in the
original thread of execution of the forkIO and therefore was affected by
the killThread th whereas l was not.

Does this read correct to you?  If so, then I understand!

Thanks,
- Marcus

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
> Hello Marcus,
>
> Sunday, December 20, 2009, 4:17:26 PM, you wrote:
>
> par adds so-called spark to the queue of calculations to proceed. once
> RTS has free thread, this thread starts to calculate the spark. it has
> no communication with thread that created the spark. when calculation
> is completed, its thunk will be updated with result of calculation (as
> usual in lazy calculations). so killing originator thread doesn't
> affect all the sparks it has created, it only prevents generation of
> new sparks.
-- 
  Marcus D. Gabriel, Ph.D.                         Saint Louis, FRANCE
  http://www.marcus.gabriel.name            mailto:marcus at gabriel.name
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