Andrew Kenneth Milton wrote:
>
> +----[ Victor Tsou ]---------------------------------------------
> | >Here are the reactions from someone into this stuff:
> | >
> | > First off, typical desktop platforms (Intel and AMD) don't support,
> | > or don't initialize the APIC.
> | ...
> | I don't understand why this matters; all it matters is that the host OS
> | supports it, correct? And, since you have Linux source, you can hack it
> | in.
>
> That's just great if you only want it to ever run under Linux. There are
> a number of other intel based UNIX variants whose userbases would benefit
> greatly from freemware. Some of them don't come with source, what happens
> if they don't initialize the APIC? If there's a way to do it w/o modifying
> the kernel, then that solves the bigger problem.
We're writing a kernel driver, so we can do it ourselves (we're
part of the kernel :)). It does become a problem though if the
host OS seriously uses the local timers for something (linux uses
them for profiling which is not important.)
Ramon
