SKILL FFI

[satya]

Does anyone know about the FFI (foreign function interface) used in
SKILL (there must be one for the Motif/Qt libraries) and if it might be
possible to use it more generally?

Thanks,
Satya

 

[Jimka]

There is no public ffi.

It seems to me like there are two basic reasons someone might want
an FFI. 1: because there might be libraries written in another
language which
you want to use in SKILL. 2. because you might want to write a new
application (or convert an existing one) in a compiled language to
increase performance, or hide the implementation from the end users.

Some (but not all) of the need for an FFI would go away if there
were a native skill compiler. I.e., what if you could compile your
skill functions or skill files into natively running x86/sparc/etc
"plugins"
which integrated effortlessly into the cadence framework? And what if
that
compiled SKILL was as safe, as robust, and as easy to use as
interpreted
SKILL?

There are several very good lisp compilers available for other flavors
of lisp. Some are open source. You can download them and take
a look at them. Some of them offer equivalent performance of c
compilers
for certain applications. cf SBCL, CMUCL, AllegroCL, ECL

Anyone wanting to know more about such capability for SKILL
should contact me.
(jimka@cadence.com)


satya wrote:

Does anyone know about the FFI (foreign function interface) used in
SKILL (there must be one for the Motif/Qt libraries) and if it might be
possible to use it more generally?

Thanks,
Satya

 

[satya]

On Jan 6, 3:18 am, "Jimka" <jimka@rdrop.com> wrote:

There is no public ffi.

I kind of guessed that from the non-existence of the word "ffi" in
sourcelink . I was hoping for a private API that I could request to be
made public.

It seems to me like there are two basic reasons someone might want
an FFI. 1: because there might be libraries written in another
language which
you want to use in SKILL. 2. because you might want to write a new
application (or convert an existing one) in a compiled language to
increase performance, or hide the implementation from the end users.

I think 1 is the more important reason (and the one which prompted
my original question). CPU cycles are plentiful these
days and SKILL isn't too bad in the performance department.

<snip>

Thanks
Satya

 

[Jimka]

it's an interesting point of view... however, it depends on
what kinds of programs you are writing as well. I find SKILL
very slow from may types of applications. I wish it were
100 times faster which it could indeed be.


-jim


satya wrote:

On Jan 6, 3:18 am, "Jimka" <jimka@rdrop.com> wrote:
There is no public ffi.

I kind of guessed that from the non-existence of the word "ffi" in
sourcelink . I was hoping for a private API that I could request to be
made public.

It seems to me like there are two basic reasons someone might want
an FFI. 1: because there might be libraries written in another
language which
you want to use in SKILL. 2. because you might want to write a new
application (or convert an existing one) in a compiled language to
increase performance, or hide the implementation from the end users.

I think 1 is the more important reason (and the one which prompted
my original question). CPU cycles are plentiful these
days and SKILL isn't too bad in the performance department.

snip

Thanks
Satya