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Ok. A problem with separate processes is that you have to serialize your data when passing messages. This is a pity because functional data structures + structural sharing can be very efficient. For example, I can't imagine how someone would implement a high performance database without structural sharing.

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Processes by name, from Erlang.

They're implemented (in my mind so far) as preemptive threads, one per interpreter; which makes them slightly more heavy-weight than Erlang's NxM and a nice complement to purely cooperative multitasking.

Sounds interesting. I'm not familiar with Erlang, and I still wonder how shared memory is managed.

It's one of those languages that does things differently to solve actual issues, not to check boxes.

From my limited experience, Erlang doesn't share data between processes; you throw it over the fence by sending to the process inbox, which is where the locking takes place.

Still, shuffling data between OS threads is an easier problem to solve than serializing between OS processes.

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