Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S268052AbUIPNPl (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Sep 2004 09:15:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S268045AbUIPNPl (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Sep 2004 09:15:41 -0400 Received: from turing-police.cc.vt.edu ([128.173.14.107]:20429 "EHLO turing-police.cc.vt.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S268053AbUIPNPZ (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Sep 2004 09:15:25 -0400 Message-Id: <200409160633.i8G6XClT019796@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.7.1 07/26/2004 with nmh-1.1-RC3 To: David Stevens Cc: Netdev , leonid.grossman@s2io.com, Linux Kernel Subject: Re: The ultimate TOE design In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:11:04 MDT." From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="==_Exmh_1833311858P"; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 02:33:10 -0400 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2009 Lines: 50 --==_Exmh_1833311858P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:11:04 MDT, David Stevens said: > Why don't we off-load filesystems to disks instead? Or a graphics > card that implements X ? :-) I'd rather have shared system resources-- > more flexible. :-) All depends where in the "cycle of reincarnation" we are at the moment. Way back in 1964, IBM released this monster called System/360 - and one of the things it did was push a *lot* of the disk processing off on the channel and disk controller using a count-key-data format rather than the fixed-block that Linux uses. So out on the platters, the disk format would say things like "This is a 400 byte record, the first 56 of which is a search key". A lot of stuff, both userspace and OS, used things like 'Search Key Equal' and letting the disk do all the searching. There was also this terminal beast called the 3270, which had a local controller for the terminals, and only interrupted the CPU on 'page send' type events. Back then, the ideas made sense - it wasn't at all unreasonable for a single S/360-65 to drive 3,000+ concurrent terminals in an airline reservation system or similar (and we're talking about a box that had literally only half the hamsters of a VAX780). But today, the 3270 isn't seen much anymore, and currently IBM emulates the CKD format on fixed-block systems for their z/Series boxes running z/OS or whatever MVS is called now.... --==_Exmh_1833311858P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 iD8DBQFBSTOmcC3lWbTT17ARAmroAJ4t/GYMC09woAJLa4BvbV4TgxoNWwCgg0cW y50v9EReZojc6s9/HwxVc58= =yw9V -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_1833311858P-- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/