Re: dynamically allocating chunks from shared memory

Markus Wanner wrote:
> On 07/20/2010 09:05 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>> Hmm, deriving code from a paper published by IBM sounds like bad news --
>> who knows what patents they hold on the techniques there?
>
> Yeah, that might be an issue. Note, however, that the lock-based 
> variant differs substantially from what's been published. And I sort 
> of doubt their patents covers a lot of stuff that's not lock-free-ish.

There's a fairly good mapping of what techniques are patented and which 
were only mentioned in research in the Sun dynamic memory patent at 
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7328316.html ; that mentions an earlier 
paper by the author of the technique Markus is using, but this was from 
before that one was written.  It looks like Sun has a large portion of 
the patent portfolio in this area, which is particularly troublesome now.

-- 
Greg Smith  2ndQuadrant US  Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg@2ndQuadrant.com   www.2ndQuadrant.us