Re: [RT] [RFC] simple SMI detector

[Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org>]

On Sat, 2009-01-24 at 23:02 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:

> I'm not sure exactly how one would do this certification, but I agree
> that some kind of "real-time ready" logo/certification program would
> make a huge amount of sense, with some standardized metrics of maximum
> time spent in an SMI routine, and under what circumstances (in some
> cases it occurs every 30-60 minutes; on other cases, only when the CPU
> is about to melt itself into slag, or when there are ECC errors, etc.)
> There is a huge difference between a system which stops the OS on all
> CPU's dead in its tracks for milliseconds once every 45 minutes,
> versus one which only triggers an SMI in extreme situations when the
> hardware is about to destroy itself.

I actually already talked to a certain industry group about a different
program but will mention this idea also - some kind of industry notion
of "real time platform" probably wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm not sure
what the vendors would say/think, but it's probably worth having the
discussion anyway. I think we're all right now having to do a lot of
legwork in testing/certifying that systems have acceptable latencies.

Jon.