Donnie Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> quotes Linus Torvalds thus: > The fundamental result of access space separation is that > you can't share data structures. That means that you can't > share locking, it means that you must copy any shared data, > and that in turn means that you have a much harder time > handling coherency. All your algorithms basically end up > being distributed algorithms. > > And anybody who tells you that distributed algorithms > are "simpler" is just so full of sh*t that it's not even > funny. > > Microkernels are much harder to write and maintain > exactly because of this issue. You can do simple > things easily - and in particular, you can do things where > the information only passes in one direction quite easily, > but anythign else is much much harder, because there is > no "shared state" (by design). And in the absense of shared > state, you have a hell of a lot of problems trying to make > any decision that spans more than one entity in the > system.
Dare I say it. Linus is right. Of course, saying that something is harder doesn't mean that it's a bad idea; it's harder to run a fair court system than a kangaroo court, but that doesn't mean we should abandon efforts toward the former. Still, he is essentially right. The conclusion is--dare I say it--right as well. The best computer systems *are* single address space systems. Of this, I have absolutely no doubt. Linux, I hasten to add, as any *ix, is emphatically not a single address space system. Thomas _______________________________________________ Bug-hurd mailing list Bug-hurd@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hurd
