From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Dec 12 10:49:41 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.84]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 362D337B423; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:49:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from pool0253.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.192.253] helo=mindspring.com) by gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16EERi-0001T5-00; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:49:35 -0800 Message-ID: <3C17A6C4.FDBDE16C@mindspring.com> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:49:40 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mike Smith Cc: Bernd Walter , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: irq References: <200112121819.fBCIJP100888@mass.dis.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mike Smith wrote: > It might be more realistic to say that PCI tries to discourage the use of > interrupts, and hardware vendors haven't really gotten the message. 8^). That's because there is no more important task for your CPU to do than to poll devices to see if they need to do I/O; what the heck are these "program" things, anyway, and what exactly is their relevence to electrical engineering, again? > You should look at recent PCI revisions, however, and the MSI > (message-signalled interrupt) mechanism which, if implemented widely, > will solve at least some of the major problems with PCI and interrupts. Thanks for the pointer; I haven't been following PCI standards recently, except for speed and size extensions. It looks like it's time to look at them yet again. Do you know if this is going to be mandatory for PCI-X devices? I don't think it will be very widely used until it's required. 8^(. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message