From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Jul 11 18:48:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA13925 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 11 Jul 1997 18:48:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA13920 for ; Fri, 11 Jul 1997 18:48:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.5/8.7.3) id LAA27296; Sat, 12 Jul 1997 11:18:13 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199707120148.LAA27296@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: I2O only available under NDA? In-Reply-To: from "Ron G. Minnich" at "Jul 11, 97 12:27:38 pm" To: rminnich@Sarnoff.COM (Ron G. Minnich) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 11:18:13 +0930 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, deischen@iworks.InterWorks.org, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Ron G. Minnich stands accused of saying: > > On Sat, 12 Jul 1997, Michael Smith wrote: > > To be honest, I think that what can be seen of their architecture > > _sucks_. It offers little or no parallelism, and for all that the > > '960 is reasonably quick and VxWorks a fairly nice RTOS, it simply > > I think you can make a pretty strong case that I2O is there to cover for > the performance failings of Windows/NT. One has to ask "how?". It strikes me that the extra software layers and the implicit serialisation involved in using a coprocessor will only _worsen_ the overall performance of the system. What I _don't_ see in their architecture are things like extra buffering DMA controllers, a decent PIC, etc., all of which would help drag the PC architecture up out of the 70's. > ron -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[