Messages in this thread | | | From | "Kendall Bennett" <> | Date | Sun, 5 Dec 1999 12:53:18 -0800 | Subject | Re: Portable binary modules |
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Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> Not at the binary level. Our uniprocessor builds make most > spinlocks become null code or local cli/sti instructions. That > avoids us taking the performance hit. It also means that the locks > the SMP module wants to use are not actually there in truth.
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).
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.
Regards,
+---------------------------------------------------------------+ | SciTech Software - Building Truly Plug'n'Play Software! | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Kendall Bennett | Email: KendallB@scitechsoft.com | | Director of Engineering | Phone: (530) 894 8400 | | SciTech Software, Inc. | Fax : (530) 894 9069 | | 505 Wall Street | ftp : ftp.scitechsoft.com | | Chico, CA 95928, USA | www : http://www.scitechsoft.com | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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