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Date:      Wed, 18 Nov 1998 10:42:50 -0800 (PST)
From:      Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
To:        Marius Bendiksen <Marius.Bendiksen@scancall.no>
Cc:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, rnordier@nordier.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD on i386 memory model
Message-ID:  <199811181842.KAA06180@apollo.backplane.com>
References:  <199811171806.LAA03809@usr09.primenet.com> <3.0.5.32.19981118121341.00975ac0@mail.scancall.no>

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:>    Interrupt gates are definitely faster.
:
:Okay. I seemed to recall it being the other way around. Obtw; are they only
:faster upon entry, or do they return quicker, too?

    On the 386 and 486, call gates are faster.  On the pentium, pentium-PRO,
    and pentium-II, interrupts are faster.

    Argument copying is wasteful and has limited use on systems where the
    supervisor has access to the user mode memory map.  FreeBSD (and virtually
    all other operating systems) uses a two-layer design, not a multi-layer
    ring design.  About the only thing you might see different between OS's
    is that some processors have a separate 'interrupt stack'.  On Intel cpu's,
    however, the abstraction is useless due to the completely broken ring
    design because many supervisor instructions only work in ring 0.  ring 1
    and ring 2 are almost completely useless.

					-Matt

:Marius Bendiksen, IT-Trainee, ScanCall AS <marius@scancall.no>
:

    Matthew Dillon  Engineering, HiWay Technologies, Inc. & BEST Internet 
                    Communications & God knows what else.
    <dillon@backplane.com> (Please include original email in any response)    


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