Re:Message Passing and the Actor Model
by lliamander on Monday March 05, 2018 @09:01PM
(#16526320)
In Erlang the actors are lightweight processes are much smaller than OS threads. I wouldn't worry.
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Right, but in my scenario (and I appreciate perhaps this means I'm "doing it wrong"), the messages themselves have a fairly heavy payload (around 800 bytes). Given that, whether I'm spinning up an actor or a message, if it can't be processed quickly it's consuming a non trivial chunk of memory.
Re:Message Passing and the Actor Model
by lliamander on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @12:47PM
(#16530473)
I wouldn't say you are doing anything wrong (or, at least I couldn't say that for certain without knowing more about your problem domain :) ).
However, I also don't think you have to worry about the message payloads being too large. In Erlang, normally objects are copied between processes. However, for large objects (>64 bytes) they are put in a shared heap, and only the pointers are copied between processes[0].
[0] https://hamidreza-s.github.io/erlang%20garbage%20collection%...