From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 4 Sep 2001 21:51:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 4 Sep 2001 21:51:30 -0400 Received: from pizda.ninka.net ([216.101.162.242]:14214 "EHLO pizda.ninka.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 4 Sep 2001 21:51:12 -0400 Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2001 18:51:23 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <20010904.185123.26276785.davem@redhat.com> To: andrew.grover@intel.com Cc: riel@conectiva.com.br, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, _deepfire@mail.ru Subject: Re: lilo vs other OS bootloaders was: FreeBSD makes progress From: "David S. Miller" In-Reply-To: <4148FEAAD879D311AC5700A0C969E89006CDE0E2@orsmsx35.jf.intel.com> In-Reply-To: <4148FEAAD879D311AC5700A0C969E89006CDE0E2@orsmsx35.jf.intel.com> X-Mailer: Mew version 2.0 on Emacs 21.0 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: "Grover, Andrew" Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 14:52:17 -0700 I'm not advocating anything similar for Linux, I'm just saying it's an interesting thought experiment - what if the SMP-ness of a machine was abstracted from the kernel proper? How much of the kernel really cares, or really *should* care about SMP/UP? Every spinlock :-) You'd have to either accept their overhead, or have some way to nop out the instructions on uniprocessor boots. There would still be the space overhead after such code patching. I remember the Digital UNIX folks did something interesting in this area. There should be a paper online somewhere. Later, David S. Miller davem@redhat.com