[unios] Re: Priorities

[Srikant Sharma (Chiku)]

From: "Srikant Sharma (Chiku)" <srikants@wipinfo.soft.net>

On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Pat Wendorf wrote:

> I don't know how you find it so hard to believe that there is a common ground
> between all users...  Explain here why you think it's totally impossible.  A
> computer is a computer.  It can be same computer that runs an assembly line, a
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> game, a word processor... Why is it we should have 3 different OS's?


A COMPUTER IS A COMPUTER :
This is not the case .........

When you say 'A computer is a computer`  you are making a big mistake. 

This can be a big understatement.

Do you put a 256 ultrasparc processor MPP machine in the same category as 
a uni processor IBM PC ?

Do you think the Algorithm required to schedule different tasks on these 
two machines will be the same .. in effect will the Kernel be same for
both these machines ?

Forget about MPP or SMP....
tell me, are the requirement of a Uniprocessor  machine and a Dual processor
Master/Slave configuration same. On a dual processor machine, the complexity
in the OS in terms of synchronizing mem acceses .. protection in the critical 
region etc. are 'mandatory' but that complexity is not at all required on 
uniprocessor machine. If one goes ahead and says a computer is a computer and
put's in that extra code for Uni proc machines also ... are you doing the
justice with the machine and its owner ? .. aren't you making it uneccesarily
slow ? (whether you can really do that is another point). On the other hand if
you don't  put in this extra code for the dual proc machine, the machine will
never even boot up.

IT CAN BE SAME COMPUTER THAT RUNS AN ASSEMBLY LINE, A GAME, A WORD PROCESSOR

Oh really ?
Do you think  the basic hardware will always be the same .. i.e a basic machine
and the rest of the stuff will be managed by software (in short OS) ?

A game involving great GUI requires a Graphic accelerator .. the driver for 
which needs to be written. Better make it even faster  put the  graphic 
related code in the Kernel it self ... better .. make the kernel's only functionto control the graphic accelerator...  This is the most optimized for of that 
game machine ..  At this highest level this game machine is an 'Embeded System'
A specialised machine for a specific purpose.  A computer required for 
controlling Air traffic .. , Weather forcasting .... require huge number 
crunching .. that too in real time ....  These are huge MPP machines with 
tremendous number crunching power ... and the irony is that these are the 
machines which usually provide just a  raw stream of Data  which is then 
fed to different computers which are again specialised in simulations. 

Are you going to control this different Hardware with same software ?


Forget the case of different categories of machines. Consider two machines 
having exactly the same configuration  but being used for two different purposes
viz.  routing the network traffic ... &   image processing. ..
n/w traffic controller needs a kind of n/w stack built into the Kernel ..
needs network controller code  and not some image enhancement s/w .. 
on the other hand a  image processing comp will require some dsp chip 
emulators built into it ...   where do you put it to make it most optimized 
one ? .... in kernel ...

For that matter My current project ( at my job)is about building an enhanced
form of OS which lets you process datawarehousing  from 100 GB to terabytes.
Less than 100 Gb ? .. sorry we can't ensure that the overhead in the OS will
not overshadow the actual processing requirement for such a small data. 

These are not even the hundredth part of my reasons I believe it hard to think
that there is a common ground between all the users.

--
Srikant



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