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From: arnold@skeeve.com
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, paul.winalski@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [TUHS] non-blocking IO
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2020 11:59:05 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <202006021759.052Hx5Et022619@freefriends.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABH=_VRjxL=p8f+ePVvBWKuQN3aFE-BW4aE9MAcjwkK-Mm1rkg@mail.gmail.com>

Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:

> So I'm curious as to what the rationale was for Unix to have been
> designed with basic I/O being blocking rather than asynchronous.

I don't doubt that it was "simplify, simplify, simplify". Async I/O
is much messier than Unix's read/write model. The Unix model was
simpler to design, simpler to code, simpler to get right, and undoubtedly
took much less OS code than an async model would have; on the PDP-11
that would have mattered.

Also, the early Unixs were on smaller -11s, not the /45 or /70 with
split I&D space and the ability to address lost more RAM.

My guess, anyway. :-)

Arnold

  reply	other threads:[~2020-06-02 17:59 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-06-02 14:19 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-06-02 17:45 ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 17:59   ` arnold [this message]
2020-06-02 18:53     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 19:18       ` Clem Cole
2020-06-02 21:15         ` Lawrence Stewart
2020-06-02 22:03           ` [TUHS] non-blocking IO - threads Jon Steinhart
2020-06-02 23:05             ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:09               ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:21                 ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-03  0:39                   ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:12               ` Jon Steinhart
2020-06-03 16:42                 ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-03 17:57                   ` Jon Forrest
2020-06-03  5:38           ` [TUHS] Unix on the Arpanet Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-03 12:23             ` Lawrence Stewart
2020-06-02 18:23   ` [TUHS] non-blocking IO Dan Cross
2020-06-02 18:56     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 19:23       ` Clem Cole
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-06-06 13:29 Noel Chiappa
2020-06-02 20:13 Noel Chiappa
2020-06-02 20:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-06-02 22:14   ` Rich Morin
2020-06-03 16:31     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-03 19:19       ` John P. Linderman
2020-06-02  8:22 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-06-02  0:08 Noel Chiappa
2020-06-01 23:17 Noel Chiappa
2020-05-31 11:09 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-31 16:05 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-31 16:46   ` Warner Losh
2020-05-31 22:01     ` Rob Pike
2020-06-01  3:32       ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-01 14:58         ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-04  9:04           ` Peter Jeremy
2020-06-04 14:19             ` Warner Losh
2020-06-04 16:34               ` Tony Finch
2020-06-04 16:50               ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-05 16:00                 ` Dan Cross
2020-06-12  8:18                   ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-01 16:58     ` Heinz Lycklama

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