Pile system (2nd wave Cybernethics)

[Kyle Lahnakoski]

Oleg Cherevko wrote:
> Kyle Lahnakoski wrote:
>> Oleg Cherevko wrote:
>>> Tanks for the useful reference.
>>> Don't you think that the basic Pile building block (binary relation
>>> from binary relations to binary relations) is strikingly similar to
>>> what Brian Rice tried to do with his Arrow System?
>>>
>> ... or strikingly similar to most other relational systems?
>
> No.
> Perhaps I should clarify my terminology a bit.
> A binary relation R is an association between elements of two sets S1
> and S2. In fact, R is a set of some tuples (s1, s2) where s1 is taken
> from S1 and s2 is taken from S2. Now, if we consider rather special
> case of S1 == S2 == ST, where ST is a "set of tuples" and consists of
> the very tuples that constitute the relation R we will get the main
> reflexive structure behind Pile.
>
> As far as I remember, this is similar to Brian's arrows that have
> other arbitrary arrows as their endpoints (i.e. an arrow points from
> one arrow to another arrow).
>

Thanks, but my interest is not in the reflexive/reflective core of Pile;
like you mentioned it has been done.  Putting objects (arrows) into a
database(relational store) has also been done.

What has not been done (as far as I know) is how to solve the
lack-of-spatial-locality problem that comes from essentially using a
database for storing those relations.   Direct memory-addressed objects,
despite all their drawbacks, are often lucky to be physically close to
objects it references..This closeness reduces cache misses.  This
closeness does not naturally happen in a database; where a single object
can be scattered over several relations, and so too are the objects it
references.  Without fine control over how relations are stored; your
data access speed is restricted to the speed of the physical storage
capable of holding the whole program image.  This usually turns out to
be main memory speeds which is an order of magnitude slower the the L1
cache.

If someone on this list has seen how to get the benefits of relational
representation along with the benefits of localized data, then please
pass me a link.


Thanks






-- 
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Kyle Lahnakoski                                       kyle at arcavia.com
(416) 892-7784                                    Arcavia Software Ltd