In the Go Concurrency Patterns presentation Rob Pike demonstrates how unbuffered channels are
enough for many concurrency tasks. (NB: use Left/Right arrow keys to scroll the presentation)
It reminded me of the Forth chips produced by Chuck Moore and colleagues.
The current version contains 144 cores per square centimeter chip. The machine language is Forth and
each core is equipped with its own little data and control Forth stacks, making it a fully fledged
independent computer (that's why the more precise term is "multi-computer chips" rather than "multi-core").
The cores talk to each other via communication ports. Writing to a port suspends the core until
the peer reads the value. And vice-versa.
This semantics corresponds to the Go channels.
The chips have other interesting properties. Quoting the doc:
A computer can read from multiple ports [Corresponds to Go's select]
and can execute instructions directly from those ports.
FINE GRAINED ENERGY CONTROL: ... The read or write instruction is automatically
suspended in mid-operation if the address [one or more of communication ports and I/O pin] is inactive,
consuming energy only due to transistor leakage currents, resuming when the address becomes active.
NO CLOCKS: Most computing devices have one or more clocks that synchronize all
operations. When a conventional computer is powered up and waiting to respond
quickly to stimuli, clock generation and distribution are consuming energy at a huge rate
by our standards, yet accomplishing nothing. This is why “starting” and “stopping” the
clock is a big deal and takes much time and energy for other architectures. Our
architecture explicitly omits a clock, saving energy and time among other benefits.
Read more at the company website.
As Rob Pike says, the channel-like concurrency primitives are not new. It is interesting to see
them implemented in hardware.
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