Memory Management in AmigaOS4.0 Explained

[Tigger]

Ah, better? Doesn't look like Tigger is too impressed.

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Kenny and Joanna too. There's a shock.

Perhaps they should rename it GroundhogBunny - same shyte over and over and over and over and over....

Gee Uncharted can you explain to me why you are impressed by OS 4 using slab, and please inform us all about the first time you knew you were using a slab memory system, and why you think its a great and innovative system for use in OS4.    
    -Tig

[Tigger]

So what on earth is the magical MorphOS mechanism that beats out slab allocation?

I actually don't know (or even care) how MorphOS does it, probably still like the Amiga used to do it, though its possible they may have some Slab like implementation.  My issue is this, when I started using computers, at which point most of the guys from Hyperion were breast feeding or not yet born, computers didnt have moniters, you typed a line it showed up on the piece of paper if you were lucky, we also had cards, but thats another story.   Moniters for terminals were a big technical innovation, they came after the theory of slab programming, which is used in XP, Linux, (huge list of OSs deleted).  Its not innovative for an OS to take an idea older then the amiga computer and which is used by everyone else as our memory management system, its ok to do that, but dont write an article about the innovation of the memory system, when its just like everyone elses.  Any real technical person is going to look at that article, laugh at it (as I did) and say why should I use this OS, especially as poorly described as the system is.  Someone said the site is for OEMs to look at, I hope not, no OEM is going to look at those first two articles (Ram Disk and then new Slab article) and think that they want to use this OS on there hardware, and since it doesnt run on any manufactured hardware at all now, it doesnt really have a market anyways.  
    -Tig

[Tigger]

Well, you can always get an microA1 - they are actually available and ships with a pre-release of AOS4.

Actually there not, and havent been for months, but hey try again.  If you want to argue this point, please inform me the name of a dealer where I can buy an Amigaone today and get it fedexed to me.  AmigaOnes are nat available now, and won't be available in the future.  This is the real problem with OS4, the other one is that HYPErion is trying to live up to its name even though they dont have anything they can sell as the moment.

I've notice you like to flame AOS4, and go ahead. If that makes you life easier, then be my guest.

I flame idiots, you are getting close to playing in fire now, Hyperion is taking a very old Memory management idea and trying to jam it into the Amiga system, its likely to be slower, and not offer alot of benefit.  I and others have doubts whether they have actually implemented it in this manner now, and fear this system will break lots of current software.  

The rest of us will be pleased to see AOS4 using techniques from the large OS'es rather than an outdated primitive technology which was known to be bad at the time it was implemented.

Why exactly do you believe that the current system is either primative or bad??   Its worked for a long time, and given the way the Amiga works, it definitely had advantages over what Hyperion claims they are doing for OS4.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

Maybe you should check out what is written and "being presented" before you make an ass of yourself.

Maybe you should.  First of all why is this a ground breaking system like hyperion claims if its from 1968.   Secondly, don't you think that the fact the example they give breaks worse on a slab system then on the current amiga system makes it a bad example to use on there website.  Don't believe me, work it out yourself.  The example that Hyperion uses for why they are using a slab system, works worse on a slab system then on the the current implementation.  
   -Tig

[Tigger]

Well, I know of at least 3 dealers in Scandinavia and Northern Europe who are capable of shipping mikroA1.

Which part of give me a name was confusing to you??

The management system is a tad old, but it's fine in many OS'es, and there is no reason it shouldn't work fine in AOS. It is way better than the old system, which resembles the memory management in Win9X way too much.

The current system isnt like win9x, and there are several reasons the slab system will preform slower on the new system.  Is slower better to you??

The old system is bad because it wastes too much memory and is inflexible. As I wrote in the former paragraph it looks a lot like other outdated and long time since replaced systems.

Again, you understand the example they give actually works better with the old system, rather then with the new system right???   I mean super OS genius such as yourself caught on to that right away, right??   But you still think the 3 pages on the website is ok, I mean posting an example that shows you dont know how slab works is good for a website preaching you use slab??
    -Tig

[Tigger]

I can't see anywhere in the article that they say they invented this technology or that it's ground breaking. Just more crap from the usual suspects.

From the article:

"our desire to bring this new version of the Operating System to the cutting edge - AmigaOS4.0 has introduced a better way of doing things"

And this

"This is just one more example of the technical innovations we are bringing to AmigaOS4.0 to make the greatest Operating System of the past into the greatest Operating System of the future."

Again really think these 1968 concepts are cutting edge and technical innovations???  And apparently you are the one who didnt read the article.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

One has to admire such bloody-mindedness as yours. Okay, so the extreme example chosen to illustrate fragmentation doesn't show the advantages of slab allocators and objects caches, but that's no reason to dismiss the concepts.

You are missing my point.   First of all this an old idea, its not innovative, etc as Hyperion says on there website.   Secondly, there example shows they basically do not understand slab, I do, I've used it on more then one occasion, thats not the issue, look at my first post on moobunny.  I didnt know whether to laugh or cry, because here is the OS company, selling there OS by showing they dont know why you would use slab over the current implementation.  And because slab has more overhead then the current implementation, its really worse in the case they gave.  If you were an OEM looking for an OS, (say like I have done on several occasions) would this make you not consider OS4??  Absolutely, if the company selling an OS, doesnt understand the concepts they are selling, I am surely not going to trust there OS on my product.   Slab is used by many OS's, but for the most part they were all designed to use it from the ground up, I have a feeling that between the JIT and this memory change, alot of old stuff is going down, I'm talking 1.4 level of breakage, which ended up with us going 2.0 instead, which was less groundbreaking as an OS, but more compatible with the current software.  I really dont imagine Hyperion is going to put anything like clickity-split into the OS, do you??
     -Bill

[Tigger]

"A better way of doing things" - Isn't it better to have memory protection than not? "Their desire to bring AmigaOS to the the cutting edge" - Adding memory protection is helping to get that desire fullfilled. One step at a time...

Why all this memory protection comments, didnt you read the article??  It has nothing to do with Memory Protection, in fact the phrase memory protection never shows up in the entire article.  Its hard to take your arguements seriously when we are talking about a Memory Allocation article and you decide we are talking about Memory protection.

So you're saying SLAB wasn't a technical innovation?

No, I'm saying putting slab in AmigaOS in 2005 isnt a technical innovation.  But you know that, you are just arguing.   Slab is an old concept its used in lots of OSs (including Windows).  Rubber tires were a technical innovation at one time on cars, putting rubber tires on a car these days is not a technical innovation.  If I wrote that my car had the technical innovation of rubber tires, you'd think that was silly.  If Hyperion writes that they have implemented the technical innovation of slab memory management, you dance around excited.
   -Tig

[Tigger]

Okay, so you are say that Amiga OS 4.0 is the only current OS that is using this nearly 40 year old idea?

No, in fact if you were reading the thread you'd see I pointed out that most OS's use this method.

So, that would make Window one of the only true modern cutting edge inovative OSs!

Well it uses Slab too, so using Hyperion logic, apparently it is cutting edge and super innovative, of course it and I believe all of the others that actually use it, were designed to use it from the start, not trying to shoehorn it in ala what Hyperion is trying to do with AmigaOS.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

What part of this is bad? Would you rather they had left it as it was?

They took a working system with known inefficiencies and have replaced it with another system with different inefficiencies and potential issues running current software.  Is that really better then fixing the real issues with the OS so it can be done.

For people who don't care about AmigaOS4 I wonder why you seem to care so much.

I and a couple of hundred other developers paid for a copy in OS4 over 3 years ago, it would be really nice to actually see the OS get completed.

I think you do it to troll, you're not adding anything to the discussion, you appear to have a personal vendetta against the Hyperion people, people that have at least put a lot of their time and money into a platform that you claim to love.

So now its trolling to point technical problems with what people post on there website??  The only Hyperion person I dont like is the Belgian midget, and thats just because he told everyone he was going to kick my ass at Amiwest, till I actually showed up and he realized that Lee as the little guy of the Huntsville Mafia could break him into pieces and me I wouldnt even break a sweat doing it.  

Indeed you ignore technical responses that don't suit you, and nitpick on people's words. Grow up.

I havent ignored any technical responses.  In fact the only real technical response to me has been Rich, and Rich agrees that Hyperion example is poor to say the least.  The rest of Richs description is basically correct, his comment is that slab memory overhead could be less then of the current system (actually I think hes arguing that they are equal), traditionally slab memory overhead is usually larger then that of the amiga system, and if they actually have less memory overhead then on the current system, wouldnt that, not the poor example that slab doesnt help with be on the site??  Now why dont you grow up, and if you really dont like the thread, dont read it, or post in it.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

this replacement method is most likely a hell of a lot better than the old method. And better is good. It isn't as if people haven't been running AmigaOS4 beta for a long time anyway.

First of all, I'm not sure that this is actually in the Beta, secondly, where I think this is most likely to break things is JIT, which of course isnt in the version being used by most of the people.  

There must be a good reason that many other operating systems use the same or a similar allocation algorithm

A couple of reasons, but they dont have (to quote Bernie) our one big hunk of memory design, and you might note all of them support multi-processor (which is why I've used a derivation of it in our stuff in the past).   So amigaos doesnt have the reason to use it that others do, and again changing the memory allocation system would have been way down on my list of things to do to upgrade OS4.

Was the Belgian guy Ben Hermans?

Absolutely.  

I'm sorry you lost your money on the Amiga Inc coupon thing (I presume)

Actually it was what I like to call the pre-coupon scam.  They sold 1000 copies of AmigaDE Partypack, which was to include a free OS4 for $100 to a bunch of developers.  The product was fairly useless, and its now actually 4 years later (that was actually 2001) and we still dont have an OS4.  Of course being one of those that sat through fleecys developer seminar/beastiality conference in 2000, I'm not sure why I expected more from them.    
    -Tig