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One thing I can't seem to find is, is this a true nodejs-based operating system in that it's all single threaded? single-threaded event loop stuff works well fo

by shruubi 10y ago

One thing I can't seem to find is, is this a true nodejs-based operating system in that it's all single threaded? single-threaded event loop stuff works well for network servers but an OS? To me it seems like a terrible idea.

joshdickson 10y ago
I'm going to have to assume it's using some form of Node's clustering support, which will let you run up to X instances where X is the maximum number of supported instances for the number of cores you have. Otherwise, you're right, bad combination.
abritinthebay 10y ago
Why not? Many languages and Operating Systems used to be single threaded. Many still functionally are for a lot of things. Of course it's still challenging but it's built on top of the Linux kernel so it's also not a pure NodeOS (which would probably be impossible).
gschrader 10y ago
It's still based on the linux kernel.
pedalpete 10y ago
What about something like ChromeOS? Does it need multi-threading? If each app is running it's own thread, and can spawn new threads, maybe that would work. Also, though Node.js is currently single-threaded, there is the Nexus project https://github.com/voodooattack/nexusjs https://github.com/voodooattack/nexusjs which is doing multi-threaded javascript. Maybe this or Node.js will support multiple threads in the future.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  Nashorn on the JVM supports threads. So the problem is definitely not a JS issue but a JS engine issue. NodeJS is single threaded because NodeJS V8 is. There was a talk about implementing workers that communicate view text messages though, I don't know the state of workers in NodeJS .
itsyogesh 10y ago
I recently read about the SIMD support for Javascript. While parallelism and distributed systems contribute a lot to the OS, SIMD is something nice to have on top that. So, JS may be single threaded but having SIMD support might speed things up. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/SIMD https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
itsyogesh 10y ago
I recently read about the SIMD support for Javascript. While parallelism and distributed systems contribute a lot to the OS, SIMD is something nice to have on top that. So, JS may be single threaded but having SIMD support might speed things up. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/SIMD https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

by shruubi 10y ago

joshdickson 10y ago

I'm going to have to assume it's using some form of Node's clustering support, which will let you run up to X instances where X is the maximum number of supported instances for the number of cores you have. Otherwise, you're right, bad combination.

abritinthebay 10y ago

Why not? Many languages and Operating Systems used to be single threaded. Many still functionally are for a lot of things. Of course it's still challenging but it's built on top of the Linux kernel so it's also not a pure NodeOS (which would probably be impossible).

gschrader 10y ago

It's still based on the linux kernel.

pedalpete 10y ago

What about something like ChromeOS? Does it need multi-threading? If each app is running it's own thread, and can spawn new threads, maybe that would work. Also, though Node.js is currently single-threaded, there is the Nexus project https://github.com/voodooattack/nexusjs https://github.com/voodooattack/nexusjs which is doing multi-threaded javascript. Maybe this or Node.js will support multiple threads in the future.

spriggan3 10y ago
Nashorn on the JVM supports threads. So the problem is definitely not a JS issue but a JS engine issue. NodeJS is single threaded because NodeJS V8 is. There was a talk about implementing workers that communicate view text messages though, I don't know the state of workers in NodeJS .

itsyogesh 10y ago

I recently read about the SIMD support for Javascript. While parallelism and distributed systems contribute a lot to the OS, SIMD is something nice to have on top that. So, JS may be single threaded but having SIMD support might speed things up. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/SIMD https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

itsyogesh 10y ago