Re: Device drivers in Mach?

[leslie . polzer]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 09:01:35PM +0200, Constantine Kousoulos wrote:

> Your observation is correct. All of Mach's drivers currently reside
> inside the kernel. AFAIK, Mach's IPC is too slow to support user
> space drivers.

Phew.  Don't they have that in Minix?  I think I remember starting the
Realtek network driver in user space.  What a delighting experience.


> However, processors have gotten *a lot* faster the last ten years
> since Mach's creation, so i have a few reservations if the current IPC
> system is completely unusable with user space drivers. Once again, the
> senior members of this project can shed more light on the subject.

The only reason for me that would make me start helping with GNU/Hurd
would be device drivers (and most of the other stuff) in user space,
since Linux crashes too often when faulty hardware or drivers are at
play...

I'd appreciate more input on this, and why I would want a microkernel
architecture that isn't really one (IMHO)...

What about L4?

  Leslie 

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