[iyonix-support] Re: Lazy Task Swapping on Iyonix/RISC OS 5.11

Paul Vigay wrote:

> I suspected that perhaps when it reaches the maximum value of its
> default slot, it then tries increasing it automatically

Well, yeah, but so does any 'C' application using the standard library 
'malloc' family of functions. Nothing magic here.

> P.S. Ovation ignores its own wimpslot anyway, as on my copy it says;
> WimpSlot -min 1648K -max 1648K
> and I've just double-clicked on it to load, and immediately it comes up
> with 2392K in the task manager.

It's not "ignoring its Wimpslot", that's impossible. It is allocated 
1648K on startup. The application loads into this space, but the 'C' 
runtime and the application itself then go about allocating all sorts of 
things as the application goes though its initialisation sequence. By the 
time you get to the very first Wimp_Poll call and the very first time you 
will get to see the Task Manager update its display, the slot size has 
already expanded significantly.

This is quite a common thing for many applications.

> If you start typing in a new document you
> can see the wimpslot value flickering in the task display, so it's
> obviously doing something to chunks of memory.

Sounds like there may be an efficiency issue if Ovation is allocating or 
reallocating blocks of memory with each keystroke. Such frenetic memory 
allocation behaviour may help provoke any latent kernel bugs.

-- 
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find some electronic music at:   All sorts of other bits and pieces at:
http://www.ampcast.com/pond                         http://pond.org.uk/
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