In message <20050719160023.GA25276@bl.org>, Michael Parson writes:

> Newer IDE (ATA) is acting more and more like this.
>Once upon a time, disk I/O with IDE disks was CPU intensive.

Especially before ATA DMA.  (Aside: a number of years ago, I was 
reading a PC magazine that explained that disks no longer needed DMA, 
because the CPU was finally fast enough to keep up....)

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb