Geoff Jacobs wrote:
Everybody take a moment to remember how Windows NT was supposed to be an elegant, microkernel design.
At one point, in its early history, NT was a microkernel design. However, since hardware was much slower back then, Microsoft decided to break down and put some things, like graphics, that were initially in user-mode "servers" into the kernel. There were some people who objected to this, saying that the original pure design resulted in a more reliable OS, since user-mode bugs couldn't crash the kernel. However, the pragmatists pointed out that many of these user-mode servers were so critical to the running of the OS that if a user-mode server died, then OS became unusable anyway, so what was the point in staying faithful to the microkernel mantra. Of course, these days hardware is so fast that microkernels and VM hypervisors don't add enough overhead for most people to notice. Cordially, -- Jon Forrest Unix Computing Support College of Chemistry 173 Tan Hall University of California Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1460 510-643-1032 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
