LISPMs and "real-time"

["Scott B. Layson" <gyro@KESTREL.ARPA>]

It is *possible*, I gather, to make LispMs work in a real-time
situation, but they are not at all suited to it naturally -- the
analogy that comes to mind is of trying to climb mountain trails in a
Porsche.  If your real-time requirements are not very stringent and
can be allowed to slip occasionally, you can probably get by, but I
certainly don't recommend developing a production-quality real-time
system on a LispM.  (The existence of Picon/G2 notwithstanding.)  You
have already mentioned the reasons: paging and GC.

Unix is not the best of real-time environments either, I gather, but I
think you will find it quite a bit closer to being an appropriate
tool.  Of course C is not so much fun as Lisp.

Another possibility: John Ramsdell of MITRE
(Ramsdell%Linus@MITRE-Bedford.ARPA) has mentioned to me a project to
produce a version of T (the Yale Scheme dialect) appropriate, or at
least more appropriate, for real-time applications.  I last heard from
him in May; you might drop him a line and see how that's going.  I
think his target machine was the Sun 3.

-- Scott