Re: Questions

[Niels Möller]

"Martin Schaffner" <address@hidden> writes:

> Does that mean that syscalls are also potentially a magnitude cheaper
> (assuming the syscall doesn't have to do much)?

You can't compare L4 syscalls to linux/unix syscalls that way. Most
interesting unix syscalls will correspond to rpc to one or more other
processes on Hurd/L4. So they use the ipc system call, and there will
be a larger number of context switches. Some unix syscalls which are
more of a book-keeping character (e.g. fchdir and getuid) will not be
syscalls at all, just ordinary functions in glibc.

> I have an idea for optimizing the hurd, don't know what it's worth:

I think something like that has been considered for the device driver
framework. But I wouldn't think too much about that now. Premature
optimization is the root of all evil.

/Niels