*BSD News Article 87292


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From: wexler@inter.net.il (Enoch Wexler)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Embedded FreeBSD
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 11:03:55 GMT
Organization: Wexler Computer Systems Development Ltd.
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On 21 Jan 1997 01:02:09 GMT, j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) wrote:

>doug@qnx.com (Doug Santry) wrote:
>
>> The kernel is riddled with splhigh() calls.  I wouldn't trust a device
>> that needs attention in under 2 microseconds on a Unix system.  QNX
>> can guarantee it on a 200 MHz pentium.  That is the worst case interrupt
>> latency.
>
>Sure, 2 µs is certainly out of the question with a Unix kernel.  20 µs
>probably not.  Hey!, my old CP/M BIOS had to pick up one byte after
>each 16 µs from the FDC -- without DMA. :-)
>
>The biggest problem is to keep the splhigh() times short.

Ask the hardware engineer to do a better job and relax that 2 µs
constraint... Enoch.