I'm the student doing the summer of code project to implement STM in parrot. I've created a branch of parrot named 'stm' for this purpose.
So, to start off, a copyright question: It would be nice to use libraries that provide relatively portable atomic operation support (needed for good implementations of most "lock-free" schemes), such as HP's atomic_ops [ http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/atomic_ops/index.php4 ] which is which is under a 'modified BSD'-like license (that is, one that requires displaying copyright notices). Is this acceptable or not to put in Parrot? (If not, it's a relatively easy matter to provide fast implementations of these operations by hand for those platforms to which I have access -- but borrowing from a library should give a lot of extra portability.) -- Charles
