Re: [RFC] Fibers
> On Dec 17, 2020, at 11:30 AM, Aaron Piotrowski <aaron@trowski.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone!
>
> I would like to introduce an RFC for adding full-stack fibers to PHP: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/fibers
>
> Fibers are primarily used to implement green-threads or coroutines for asynchronous I/O. Fibers
> are similar to threads, except fibers exist within a single thread and require cooperative
> scheduling of the fibers by the process. Since fibers do not require a full CPU context switch, they
> are lightweight and more performant than multi-processing or threading for awaiting I/O.
>
> An implementation as an extension is at https://github.com/amphp/ext-fiber
>
> Fibers are a complex feature. The RFC contains many examples and links to code using fibers to
> help explain and demonstrate what is possible, however I’m certain many more questions and
> concerns will arise. Looking forward to feedback and discussion.
>
This is interesting, and potentially very useful.
I am curious about how you propose access to shared memory across fibers? What will happen if two
fibers try to update a $GLOBALS variable at the same time? Or a property of the same object? How
will developers manage that?
-Mike
P.S. Have you considered concurrency functionality like in GoLang[1] e.g. channels, where the mantra
is "Do not communicate by sharing memory; instead, share memory by communicating?"
[1] https://medium.com/@thejasbabu/concurrency-in-go-e4a61ec96491#:~:text=Do%20not%20communicate%20by%20sharing,race%20conditions%2C%20memory%20management%20etc.
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