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SubjectRe: Portable binary modules
Date
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"Kendall Bennett" <KendallB@scitechsoft.com> said:

[...]

> Every single problem that has been mentioned about Binary Portable
> modules for the Linux kernel is solvable. For the case of SMP and UP
> kernel modules, allow the developer the *option* of compiling the
> binary module with or withour SMP support. If compiled with SMP
> support, the module should still work on a UP kernel as the kernel
> would provide dummy locking functions or the UP equivalents to the
> driver. If compiled without SMP, the module would fail to load on SMP
> kernels (with an error message to the system log).

The locking primitives are inlined for performance, and radically different
in both cases. The UP kernel has a definite advantage speedwise by _not_
handling SMP locks. Your idea is to compile everything as SMP then?

> In many cases binary modules could easily be built as SMP compatible
> without any real performance hit on the system. If there is a
> performance hit, the developer can build both SMP and UP versions of
> the modules.

And for large memory, and not. And for i386, i486, i586 and i686. And so
on. Get real.
--
Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Viña del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616

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