Re: aio

William Lee Irwin III
2001-12-20T11:50:07Z

On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 11:44:05AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> we need a sane interface that covers *all* sorts of IO, not just sockets.
> I used to have exactly the same optinion as you have now, but now i'd like
> to have a common async IO interface that will cover network IO, block IO
> [or graphics IO, or whatever comes up]. We should have something saner and
> more explicit than a side-branch of fcntl() handling the socket fasync
> code.

I second this wholeheartedly. And I believe there are still more
motivations for providing asynchronous interfaces for all I/O in
the realm of assisting the userland:

(1) It would simplify the ways applications have and the kernel
overhead of responding to user input while I/O is in progress.

(2) It would provide a more efficient way to do M:N threading than
watchdogs and nonblocking poll/select in itimers.

Cheers,
Bill