Re: Direct access to hardware

From: Stuart MacDonald (stuartm@connecttech.com)
Date: Tue Jul 25 2000 - 10:59:21 EST


From: "James Sutherland" <jas88@cam.ac.uk>
> As with some of the Intel CPU bugs, the problem is NOT "invalid ATA
> commands" - it's a matter of VALID commands which are dangerous. FDIV on
> early Pentiums isn't an invalid instruction - it just produces the wrong
> results at times. So the SOFTWARE must do something to avoid this - either
> that, or you need to replace the hardware, which isn't desirable. You do
> something in the OS to prevent these problem commands being used.

You agree it's a hardware bug. Which implies it should be fixed. In
hardware. Not worked around in software. Sometimes, as with the
pentium bug, you do want to hack things, since doing so works
around the problem and Intel wasn't forth coming with a hardware
fix at first. No functionality was lost with the work around. Not so here.
Functionality will be lost.

..Stu

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 31 2000 - 21:00:19 EST