Subject: Re: putting functionality in firmware vs OS
To: wmb@firmworks.com, Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 07/30/1998 10:56:49
On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> On Wed, 29 Jul 1998 21:34:51 -0700 
>  Parag Patel <parag@cgt.com> wrote:
> 
>  > It's pretty slow because OpenFirmware is designed around a polling-only
>  > driver architecture but it can be (and has been) done.  Most FCode
>  > drivers are fairly dumb as they cannot rely on interrupts which are
>  > system dependent, and OF doesn't specify how to deal with them.
> 
> Indeed; running OpenFirmware drivers only on my Shark is VERY SLOW :-)

I believe that this is implementation, not architecture. Mitch? Care
to comment? I seem to recall a fairly zippy multitasking environment
you had set up at one time..