Re: MOSIX and kernel mods.

Kamran Karimi (karimi@cs.uregina.ca)
Thu, 4 Mar 1999 18:12:03 -0600 (CST)

On Fri, 5 Mar 1999, Richard Gooch wrote:
> > I agree completely. There will be some overhead when using systems
> > like DIPC. That is because they are taking over some of the work
> > that should be done by the programmer if he uses systems like PVM or
> > MPI. Actually, this is true even in the case of PVM and MPI, as they
> > rely on TCP sockets. I wonder if the best solution in your opinion
> > is to program the networking adaptor directly?
>
> Yep, bugger the network stack, I write to the NIC registers directly
> and grab the interrupts too. I use a dedicated NIC and network for all
> my distributed applications. Nothing beats fondling the bare metal!!!
> I use RT-Linux too to squeeze out the last drop of performance: I'm
> aiming for sub-microsecond interrupt latency!

Thanks. You just proved my whole point in my previous postings.

> A message passing API for an SMP machine is the wrong abstraction,
> because it also prevents you making best use of the machine (although
> it's not as foolish as threading/SHM for a distributed machine).

The real foolish thing is to think that what is suitable for one person
is suitable for all others, and what is not suitable for one person is
not suitable for others.

> What I object to is this idea that you can produce a single, unified
> abstraction solve all problems. It just doesn't work this way.

This is what I have been saying. I never claimed that DIPC is the
solution to all distributed programming needs, but it covers many areas.

-Kamran

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