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Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 12:37:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel Eischen <eischen@vigrid.com>
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To: Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
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cc: Andy Ritger <ARitger@nvidia.com>
Subject: Re: NVIDIA and TLS
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On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Julian Elischer wrote:
> Terry, don't go overboard..

Pleast let him.  If it's not too cold, I'll join him for a swim :-)

> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Terry Lambert wrote:
> 
> > Gareth Hughes wrote:
> > > On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Daniel Eischen wrote:
> > > > Right.  It just seems wrong to me to be able to insert __thread
> > > > after every global variable in a library and instantly make
> > > > it thread-safe.
> > > 
> > > Why, exactly?  Surely, from a programming point of view, this is
> > > exactly what you want -- a transparent way to access your thread
> > > local data.

>From a programming view, I want well thought APIs.  If you are
providing a library, its interfaces should be thread-safe by
default.  I understand that the OpenGL API is what it is, but
that shouldn't stop folks from improving on it.

> > 
> > No, what you want first and foremost is your code to compile and
> > run on all platforms, without limiting your market by relying on
> > defacto language extensions that have not been explicitly and
> > intentionally standardized by a recognized standards body.

And perhaps someone will get the urge to design an API that is
thread-safe and works on all platforms without performance
penalties, and this becomes a defacto API.

-- 
Dan Eischen