We have recently pushed a new master to GitHub tagged OTP_R15A.

This is a stabilized snapshot of the current R15 development (to be released as R15B on December 14:th) which, among other things, includes:

OTP-9468 'Line numbers in exceptions'

OTP-9451 'Parallel make'

OTP-4779 A new GUI for Observer. Integrating pman, etop and tv into

observer with tracing facilities.

OTP-7775 A number of memory allocation optimizations have been

implemented. Most optimizations reduce contention caused by

synchronization between threads during allocation and

deallocation of memory. Most notably:

Synchronization of memory management in scheduler specific

allocator instances has been rewritten to use lock-free

synchronization.

Synchronization of memory management in scheduler specific

pre-allocators has been rewritten to use lock-free

synchronization.

The 'mseg_alloc' memory segment allocator now use scheduler

specific instances instead of one instance. Apart from

reducing contention this also ensures that memory allocators

always create memory segments on the local NUMA node on a

NUMA system.

OTP-9632 An ERTS internal, generic, many to one, lock-free queue for

communication between threads has been introduced. The many

to one scenario is very common in ERTS, so it can be used in

a lot of places in the future. Currently it is used by

scheduling of certain jobs, and the async thread pool, but

more uses are planned for the future.

Drivers using the driver_async functionality are not

automatically locked to the system anymore, and can be

unloaded as any dynamically linked in driver.

Scheduling of ready async jobs is now also interleaved in

between other jobs. Previously all ready async jobs were

performed at once.

OTP-9631 The ERTS internal system block functionality has been

replaced by new functionality for blocking the system. The

old system block functionality had contention issues and

complexity issues. The new functionality piggy-backs on

thread progress tracking functionality needed by newly

introduced lock-free synchronization in the runtime system.

When the functionality for blocking the system isn't used,

there is more or less no overhead at all. This since the

functionality for tracking thread progress is there and

needed anyway.

... and much much more.

This is not a full release of R15 but rather a pre-release. Feel free to try our R15A release and get back to us with your findings.

Your feedback is important to us and highly welcomed.

Regards,

The OTP Team