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Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Incremental sync()s and using disk idle time
Message-ID: <3254@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 12 Mar 91 22:36:00 GMT
References: <28975@cs.yale.edu> <PCG.91Feb28195347@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> <1991Mar12.202238.19586@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Followup-To: comp.protocols.nfs
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 14

In article <1991Mar12.202238.19586@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

| That aside, the most probable result is that your big expensive main host
| CPU, which could undoubtedly run that code a lot faster, will spend all
| its time waiting for the dumb little I/O controller to run the filesystem.
| This is not a cost-effective use of hardware resources.

  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.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
        "Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
         but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"