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Date:      17 Jul 1996 20:29:19 +0200
From:      "Stefan Bethke" <stefan@Promo.DE>
To:        "Dennis" <dennis@etinc.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: mitsumi CD-ROM 
Message-ID:  <n1374487071.58218@quick.Promo.DE>

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> stealing the bus is stealing the cpu when a router is doing largely
> transfers from cards. Your cant process packets until you get them. And =
if
> the cpu is in a transfer cycle and cant get the bus then its idle.
>
> I dont want my packet transfers being interrupted by trivial disk =
activity.
> An IDE will only use the CPU when  it has it already anyway.....a
> bus-master makes the system much less predictable and assumes the wrong
> priorities.

The priorities are independent of whether programmed IO or bus-mastering =
is used; if a disk controller has the higher priority, it will interrupt =
a network controller regardless.

If I understand you correctly, you want the disk controller only to =
consume resources when there is no network activity; I'm not too familiar =
with PCI's or FBSD's arbitration logic, but I assume that FBSD will try =
to service disk controllers before network controllers (please correct me =
on this). I'm sure one could change that with some effort to give the nic =
the higher priority.

However, if you're intention is to really make this one router forward =
packets with lower latency, you might want to try to run it completely =
off MFS; then there will be no disk activity at all.

Stefan




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