[Haskell-cafe] concurrency vs. I/O in GHC

[Claude Heiland-Allen]

On 23/10/10 17:42, Gregory Crosswhite wrote:
> On 10/23/10 7:54 AM, John Lato wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 6:16 PM, Bulat Ziganshin
>> <bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com <mailto:bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello John,
>>
>> Monday, October 18, 2010, 8:15:42 PM, you wrote:
>>
>> > If anyone is listening, I would very much like for there to be a
>> > mechanism by which external functions can be called "unsafe"-ly, but
>> > without blocking all other Haskell threads. I have code that
>> does this:
>>
>> +RTS -N2
>>
>>
>> This doesn't work, which was why the OP asked in the first place. When
>> a thread calls an unsafe foreign function, it blocks everything until
>> that function returns.
>>
>
> Is that true? The last time we discussed this in Haskell Cafe the
> conclusion I drew from the discussion was that unsafe foreign functions
> block the current thread but not any other thread.

The conclusion I drew was that "unsafe" foreign functions block the 
current "capability" (OS thread) and any "threads" (Haskell forkIO etc) 
currently scheduled on that capability, but other capabilities and 
threads continue executing as normal.

Thanks,


Claude
-- 
http://claudiusmaximus.goto10.org