Re:Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
by vbezhenar on Thursday February 13, 2020 @10:33AM
(#22318479)
Remote method invocation is inherently a bad idea, because real world remote systems have significant latencies. Ordinary function call is few processor cycles. Network function call is few billions of processor cycles. While abstraction is a good thing in general, that kind of abstraction is not a good thing.
That's the reason why remote calls today are using explicit syntax, API and so on.
But with actors it's expected that sending a message to actor is something that takes some time. So you have a clear separation between ordinary function calls and actor messages.
Of course it's still a lot of difference between sending message to a thread or sending message to another machine. So take that with a grain of salt. But at least you can utilize multicore CPUs.
That's the reason why remote calls today are using explicit syntax, API and so on.
But with actors it's expected that sending a message to actor is something that takes some time. So you have a clear separation between ordinary function calls and actor messages.
Of course it's still a lot of difference between sending message to a thread or sending message to another machine. So take that with a grain of salt. But at least you can utilize multicore CPUs.