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Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!bwdls58!mlord
From: mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Incremental sync()s and using disk idle time
Message-ID: <6252@bwdls58.bnr.ca>
Date: 26 Mar 91 19:13:32 GMT
References: <28975@cs.yale.edu> <PCG.91Feb28195347@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> <1991Mar12.202238.19586@zoo.toronto.edu> <3254@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <PCG.91Mar13180706@aberdb.test.aber.ac.uk>
Sender: mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca
Reply-To: mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 11

In article <PCG.91Mar13180706@aberdb.test.aber.ac.uk> pcg@test.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Antonio Grandi) writes:
<
<As to me, I'd rather have multiple powerful CPUs on an equal footing
<doing programmed IO on very stupid devices than to have smart
<controllers, which seems to be the idea behind Henry Spencer's thinking.

I vote for smart device controllers, to which the O/S can download
software.  This gives the O/S complete control, and still allows it
to optimally offload tedious tasks.  Sort of like channel processors
on mainframes..  What?  You mean it's already been done?