[pypy-dev] Question on Hard Switching and Soft Switching

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Andrew,

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 09:34:19AM -0700, Andrew Francis wrote:
> The terms 'hard switching' and 'soft switching' constantly appear.
> 'Soft' switching is defined as cooperating switching. I will assume
> this is associated with a 'stackless.schedule()' or a blocked on
> channel.
> 
> Hard switching is defined as brute-force. However what is brute-force?
> Is this when Stackless is in pre-emptive mode and one is relying on
> the ticks?

This is a question for Stackless Python only, not PyPy, so you should
post in that mailing list, not here :-)  To answer it, it's not visible
to the user: it's just two different implementations of switching.
"Hard switching" is by actually moving part of the C stack away; "soft
switching" is using a purely standard C approach.  PyPy only has soft
switching (but with the same Stackless interface).


A bientot,

Armin.