Re: The well-factored 386

Helge Hafting
2003-07-29T11:09:23Z

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 08:41:27PM +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> I didn't realise he was talking about an x86 emulator. I thought he
> was analyzing real hardware.
>
> 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.

Perhaps useful for some embedded use with only a couple well-tested
processes running. Still, a programming error could overwrite
kernel memory instead of segfaulting.

Helge Hafting