Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:43:32 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> To: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Re[2]: vkernel & GSoC, some questions Message-ID: <20080318074332.GS44676@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <200803172016.m2HKGfjA020263@apollo.backplane.com> References: <20080316122108.S44049@fledge.watson.org> <E1JatyK-000FfY-00.shmukler-mail-ru@f8.mail.ru> <200803162313.m2GNDbvl009550@apollo.backplane.com> <3c0b01820803171243k5eb6abd3y1e1c44694c6be0f6@mail.gmail.com> <200803172016.m2HKGfjA020263@apollo.backplane.com>
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--tMbDGjvJuJijemkf Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 01:16:41PM -0700, Matthew Dillon wrote: > This reminds me of XEN. Basically instead of trying to rewrite > instructions or do 100% hardware emulation it sounds like they are > providing XEN-like functionality where the target OS is aware it is > running inside a hypervisor and can make explicit 'shortcut' calls to > the hypervisor instead of attempting to access the resource via > emulated hardware. That reminds me of IBM VM/CMS: CP (the hypervisor) had a variety of magic "syscalls" (via the DIAGNOSE instruction) that CMS would use to perform (eg) real I/O. > Frankly, I would love to see something like VMWare force an industry-w= ide > API for machine access which bypasses the holy hell of a mess we have It would need to be open and I can't see any particular driver for VMWare (or anyone else) to force this. > with the BIOS, and see BIOSes then respec to a new far cleaner API. T= he > BIOS is the stinking pile of horseshit that has held back OS developme= nt > for the last 15 years. I'd go further and say that BIOSes are getting worse: Back in the AT-clone days, you could just totally ignore the BIOS once you'd gotten the kernel loaded. Now you _have_ to keep talking to the BIOS for things like ACPI - but the BIOSes are still just as broken as they used to be. --=20 Peter Jeremy Please excuse any delays as the result of my ISP's inability to implement an MTA that is either RFC2821-compliant or matches their claimed behaviour. --tMbDGjvJuJijemkf Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.8 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkffcqQACgkQ/opHv/APuIe2rACfe+2P3UZbyZZuQDNlQic8Jm7I DQMAoK2X2gB2BqiGT9U1SxvVEq+w42cK =1toW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --tMbDGjvJuJijemkf--
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