*BSD News Article 37560


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From: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.misc,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: 16550 detection
Date: 6 Nov 1994 13:23:00 +1100
Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney - +61-2-837-1183, v.32bis v.42bis
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <39hem4$uct@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
References: <CMETZ.94Oct30051603@itchy.inner.net> <MICHAELV.94Oct31211019@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> <TYTSO.94Nov1182557@dcl.mit.edu> <199411032154.NAA12270@exit.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.zeta.org.au

In article <199411032154.NAA12270@exit.com>,
Frank Mayhar  <fmayhar@netcom.com> wrote:

>you'll be running at up to 128kbps uncompressed.  Without that 1024-byte
>FIFO, the host would quickly become swamped with interrupts.  At 115,200,
>that's 720 interrupts per second with a 16-byte FIFO, and at 900kbps,
>that's over 5600 per second.  That 1024-byte FIFO reduces this to 12
>and 87, respectively, around an order of magnitude fewer.  (The ESP
>supports DMA, as well, which further reduces the load on the host.)

I've been testing swamping with interrupts under FreeBSD-2.0 on a
486DX/33 recently.  It takes about 50000 interrupts per second to swamp
it (16000 clock and a potential 46080 serial are reduced to about 50000
total).  A 16-byte FIFO reduces the pure interrupt overhead to about
half the i/o overhead, so a larger FIFO wouldn't help much without
better i/o.
-- 
Bruce Evans  bde@zeta.org.au