Bee SmaRT

A Smalltalk runtime that is able to execute concurrent sequences of code would be very useful. Seeing the rise of multicore/multiprocessor hardware and the direction the industry is taking, increasing the amount of cores in processors each year, makes us think we should be prepared. The simplest way of making use of multiple cores is to just avoid threads and directly work on multiple processes, connected by some kind of IPC. This is easier because different processes share nothing, except what you explicitly choose. Isolation helps program safety concurrency wise, as two fully separated processes cannot have race conditions between them. Then you would ask, why not just use processes? The main reason is that threads can be lighter and, in some way, more straightforward (as different threads share all their memory and resources). But also the question can be stated conversely, why not threads? Giving the option of using threads would be nice, so why not? There are lots of VMs ...