Xref: utzoo comp.protocols.nfs:1947 comp.arch:21423 Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.arch Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Incremental sync()s and using disk idle time Message-ID: <1991Mar13.194527.28164@zoo.toronto.edu> Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1991 19:45:27 GMT References: <28975@cs.yale.edu> <1991Mar12.202238.19586@zoo.toronto.edu> <3254@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology In article <3254@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes: > This is the heart of the matter, and I agree completely. What I can't >see is how anyone can feel that the main CPU should be wasted in error >logging and retries, bad sector mapping, and handling multiple interrupts. How often do your disks get errors or bad sectors? How much CPU time is *actually spent* on doing this? Betcha it's just about zero. You lose some infinitesimal fraction of your CPU, and in return you gain a vast improvement in *how* such problems can be handled, because the software on the main CPU has a much better idea of the context of the error and has more resources available to resolve it. -- "But this *is* the simplified version | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology for the general public." -S. Harris | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry