DragonFly kernel List (threaded) for 2003-07
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Re: syscall messaging interface API
: Didn't the L4 folks find a way to make system calls on Pentiums without using
:software interrupts? Isn't this like 10x faster?
:
:I need to read stuff at the Pistachio site again but I think I am correct.
:Any chance that could get integrated into DflyBSD? [sorry for shortenting :)]
There are a number of ways to get into kernel mode.
Call Gates - Really slow
Trap Gates - Reasonable
SYSENTER - About twice as fast as a trap gate but there are
issues (typical intel stupidity)
Int0x80, 0x81, etc... those are trap gates. Overhead on a 1GHz P3
is about 100ns to get in and 100ns to get out.
We are going to stick with trap gates for the foreseeable future. There
are plenty of other ways to make system calls more efficient in those
situations that require it, like adding a feature to queue several
system calls at once, or by chaining messages, etc... 99.9% of
all programs ever written in the entire history of mankind would not
have a noticeable improvement in performance so it just isn't worth
worrying about.
-Matt
Matthew Dillon
<dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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