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Date:      Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:49:40 -0800
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org>
Cc:        Bernd Walter <ticso@cicely8.cicely.de>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: irq
Message-ID:  <3C17A6C4.FDBDE16C@mindspring.com>
References:  <200112121819.fBCIJP100888@mass.dis.org>

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Mike Smith wrote:
> It might be more realistic to say that PCI tries to discourage the use of
> interrupts, and hardware vendors haven't really gotten the message.

8^).  That's because there is no more important task for your CPU
to do than to poll devices to see if they need to do I/O; what the
heck are these "program" things, anyway, and what exactly is their
relevence to electrical engineering, again?


> You should look at recent PCI revisions, however, and the MSI
> (message-signalled interrupt) mechanism which, if implemented widely,
> will solve at least some of the major problems with PCI and interrupts.

Thanks for the pointer; I haven't been following PCI standards
recently, except for speed and size extensions.  It looks like
it's time to look at them yet again.  Do you know if this is going
to be mandatory for PCI-X devices?  I don't think it will be very
widely used until it's required.  8^(.

-- Terry

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