Re: L4-Hurd; L4 interrupts and I/O

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 08:27:31AM -0700, Christopher Nelson wrote:
> So L4 seems to handle all the dirty issues of interrupts for us.  It
> seems to me that it would be strange for the kernel to NOT handle
> interrupts for us, since then some software would have to know a lot
> more about the architecture that it's being run on that it ought.  Isn't
> that the kernel's job?

Just another note.  L4's job is _not_ to hide architecture specific details
from you.  It provides an abstract interface for memory, IRQs and some other
stuff.  But it doesn't provide a full machine abstraction like monolithic
UNIX kernels.

Simple example:  There is no debugging interface in L4!  The only thing you
get is a fault message with all the arch specific data in it.  The rest is
up to us.

That's the "micro" in microkernel.  The job of the kernel is to stay out of
the way ;)

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    address@hidden
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
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