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From: Jesse Pollard <jesse@cats-chateau.net>
To: "Ihar 'Philips' Filipau" <filia@softhome.net>,
       Werner Almesberger <werner@almesberger.net>
Subject: Re: TOE brain dump
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 08:08:50 -0500
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
References: <g83n.8vu.9@gated-at.bofh.it> <20030803151000.D10280@almesberger.net> <3F2E1F7B.3020906@softhome.net>
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On Monday 04 August 2003 03:55, Ihar 'Philips' Filipau wrote:
> Werner Almesberger wrote:
> > Ihar 'Philips' Filipau wrote:
> >>    Modern NPUs generally do this.
> >
> > Unfortunately, they don't - they run *some* code, but that
> > is rarely a Linux kernel, or a substantial part of it.
>
>    Embedded CPU we are using is based MIPS, and has a lot of specialized
> instructions.
>    It makes not that much sense to run kernel (especially Linux) on CPU
> which is optimized for handling of network packets. (And has actually
> several co-processors to help in this task).
>    How much sense it makes to run general purpose OS (optimized for PCs
> and servers) on devices which can make only couple of functions? (and no
> MMU btw)
>    It is a whole idea behind this kind of CPUs - to do a few of
> functions - but to do them good.
>
>    If you will start stretching CPUs like this to fit Linux kernel - it
> will generally just increase price. Probably there are some markets
> which can afford this.
>
>    Remeber - "Small is beatiful" (c) - and linux kernel far from it.
>    Our routing code which handles two GE interfaces (actually not pure
> GE, but up to 2.5GB) fits into 3k. 3k of code - and that's it. not 650kb
> of bzip compressed bloat. And it handles two interfaces, handles fast
> data path from siblign interfaces, handles up to 1E6 routes. 3k of code.
> not 650k of bzip.

And it handles ipfilter?
and LSM security hooks?
how about IPSec?
and IPv6?

I don't think so.
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