Re: The well-factored 386

Jamie Lokier
2003-07-29T16:21:13Z

Helge Hafting wrote:
> > The one thing that made it on-topic for me was his quiet suggestion
> > that "forreal" mode interrupts are faster, and that it might, perhaps,
> > be possible to modify a Linux kernel to run in that mode - to take
> > advantage of the faster interrupts.
>
> That would have to be a kernel for very special use. The "forreal"
> mode has protection turned off. As far as I know, that
> means any user process can take over the cpu as if
> it was running in kernel mode.

There are quite a few embedded systems where that is ok, especially if
performance is improved.

Also, I am not sure whether paging still works in "forreal" mode. If
it does, kernel memory could still be protected. Not well enough for
security, but enough to protect against programming errors.

-- Jamie