Erlang style processes in Common Lisp

[shenanigans at sonic.net]

On 08/17/2015 10:15 AM, Max Rottenkolber wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Aug 2015 08:12:36 -0700, shenanigans-65eDfwRo+1xeoWH0uzbU5w
> wrote:
>
>> Creators of Erlang have a Lisp background, and one feature of the Erlang
>> VM (BEAM) that I'd like back-ported into Common Lisp is their process.
>>
>> An Erlang "process" is cheap to create, cheap to destroy, cheap when
>> blocked, and upon exit performs bulk gc of its allocated memory; e.g.,
>> munmap().
> I have to voice interest. I would love for a CL implementation to support
> lightweight threads.

There was a successful IndieGoGo campaign for SBCL features in the 
recent past, so might there be someone interested, willing and able to 
pursue implementing something like this?

This can be its own thing rather than any attempt at paying homage to 
Erlang or BEAM vm: for me at least, it's about runtime performance and 
avoiding the big gc hits by discarding an entire heap upon worker exit 
but in a way that accommodates hundreds of thousands of concurrent 
workers.  Start small, and build from there.  Erlang & BEAM address all 
sorts of use cases for which a Lisp system wouldn't necessarily need to 
be constrained-- and keeping it more Lispy anyway.


I personally would contribute a few thousand US dollars for such an 
effort, as it's beyond my knowledge of SBCL internals at this time.

Extending ECL or as a implementation-specific package for it might be 
another option, but again, this is beyond my knowledge of its internals.

While I respect the various languages orbiting Erlang, I'd rather use 
Common Lisp.

Thanks,
-Daniel