Re: [boost] [future|interprocess] Could futures live in shared memory and synchronize process?

Subject: Re: [boost] [future|interprocess] Could futures live in shared memory and synchronize process?
From: Ion Gaztañaga (igaztanaga_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-02-17 11:57:31

vicente.botet wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As a future is a synchronization mechanism, I was wondering if
 > futures are intrisic of mutil-threaded programs and so they
 > live in the protected process memory or if the concept can be
 > used in a multi-process context and have futures/promises
 > living on shared memory.

I don't see why do we want to have a future in shared memory. Do you see 
any use case for this?

A future is a handle of a concurrency unit that has spawned another 
concurrency unit. A future for processes would be interesting, but 
passing/returning values between processes is not easy and using shared 
memory consumes at least 1 memory page.

However, I can find useful a future returning "int", just because main 
returns int and a process could spawn other processes and obtain futures 
to them (Boost.Process child is a an example of this approach). Passing 
objects between processes is not easy, but there are OS mechanisms that 
do similar things like Solaris Doors.

> Best regards,
> _____________________
> Vicente Juan Botet Escribá

Best,

Ion