Re: Driver model.. expel legacy drivers?

[John Richard Moser <nigelenki@comcast.net>]

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Kevin K wrote:
> 
> On Oct 14, 2006, at 10:04 AM, John Richard Moser wrote:
>> My math predicts that 2.6.57 (+39) will be 100M (in approximately 7
>> years if you assume 1 kernel release every 2 months); 2.6.92 (+35) will
>> breech 200M; 2.6.117 (+25) will breech 300M; and 2.6.138 (+21)) will
>> breech 400M.  That should suffice for predictions over the next 20 years
>> based on this crude model.
>>
> 
> Who knows.  By that time, CPU caches may be that size.  And hopefully
> tools are developed to an extent that they can automate cleanup.
> 

Yeah, a static code coverage analyzer or some sort of code-reducer would
be nice; these are in general pipe dreams but eh.  Also these are
compressed bzip2 tarball sizes, not compiled kernel sizes or source tree
sizes.  I would imagine a 100MB bzip2 would turn into something quite
large; the major issue is the amount of work it takes to maintain
something like that.

I am slowly forming the prediction that monolithic kernels won't survive
(Net/Open/FreeBSD, Linux) and only microkernels or so-called
"nanokernels" (or the exokernel ...) will be maintainable EVENTUALLY;
however I don't have sufficient data, as one would have to illustrate a
maintenance advantage in those models to complete that prediction and I
lack understanding to do such.  Besides, there's no good data on the
upper bound of what is maintainable; it's somewhere below the size of
the universe, that's about all I can give you.



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