Re: QEMU PIC indirection patch for in-kernel APIC work

Ingo Molnar
2007-04-05T11:36:55Z

* Avi Kivity <avi-atKUWr5tajBWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> [...] But the difference in cruftiness between kvm and qemu code
> should not enter into the discussion of where to do things.

i agree that it doesnt enter the discussion for the *PIC question, but
it very much enters the discussion for the question that i replied to:

> > > You didn't quote Anthony's point about "it's more about there not
> > > being good enough userspace interfaces to do network IO."
> > >
> > > It's easier to write a kernel-space network driver, but it's not
> > > obviously the right thing to do until we can show that an
> > > efficient packet-level userspace interface isn't possible. I
> > > don't think that's been done, and it would be interesting to try.

prototyping new kernel APIs to implement user-space network drivers, on
a crufty codebase is not something that should be done lightly. Any
negative result will not bring us any real conclusion. (was the failure
due to the concept, due the API or due to the crufty codebase?)

(but ... this is really a side-track issue for the *PIC question at
hand. PICs are not network devices, they are essential platform
components and almost an extended part of the CPU.)

Ingo