Re: PATCH: Update for the serial driver.
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
2 Sep 1999 15:18:00 GMT
Followup to: <199909021319.JAA32096@pincoya.inf.utfsm.cl>
By author: Horst von Brand <vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> said:
> > On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > > We need to be able to do this with code too. Modules that will never be
> > > used in a kernel's lifetime should be discarded.
>
> > Talk to Peter Anvin. He's doing this 32-bit bootloader thing that can
> > actually do a complete re-link, and essentially give you all the
> > advantages of modules with none of the disadvantages (ie no runtime
> > overhead in the TLB etc).
>
> Does that include loading and unloading modules into a running kernel? *That*
> is the advantage of modules, not some "load on startup" thingy.
>
That, unfortunately, does come at some cost (no 4 MB TLB entries,
poorer cache locality.) Linking a kernel at boot time allows for
conceptual modularity without the runtime-unloadability costs. Note
that being able to unload your primary disk driver is completely
useless.
-hpa
--
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
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