Re: [9fans] I/O load crashes Qemu

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

>> i find there's a certain simplicty in dealing directly
>> with hardware, provided one has documentation.
>
> Provided it is complete and the h/w well designed and
> interface regular.  Unfortunately not all that common.

you continue with this claim without presenting evidence.

i respond to this because i think there is a prevalent
attitude, not well-informed by experience, that hardware
is bad and impossible to program.  my opinion, based on
experience, is this is not true.  and restating the untruth
has the consequence of discouraging folk from working
on drivers, thus reenforcing the myth.

were it true, it would not be an attitude condusive
to getting things done.  hardware, unlike linux, is
unavoidable.

to your claim:

in my experience, the complexity of the hardware has very
little to do with the complexity of the driver.

for example, the intel 82598 10gbe is a beast of a part.
341 pages of documentation. 200 registers.  yet it's a
simple driver because
1.  of experience with other ethernet drivers;
2.  everything the driver needs from the kernel already exists;
3.  most complicated functionality was ignored;
4.  the spec has not changed; and
5.  only one part implements the register set.

- erik