13 Nov
2007
13 Nov
'07
5:39 p.m.
On Nov 13, 2007, at 1:21 AM, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
This sort of thing is exactly the area where I'm
fuzziest when it
comes to any
sort of a real understanding of big iron. Aside from seeing
references to
such stuff from time to time, I really don't have a clue as to why
you'd
_want_ something like a separate dedicated processor to handle I/
O, for one
example. Or mass storage.
The use of dedicated processors to handle specific tasks within a
large system is beneficial in a great many ways. If you have a
processor handling disk I/O, for example, that processor can deal
with error handling, possibly RAID stuff, transfer reordering and
optimization, etc., thus offloading the main processor and freeing up
its cycles for applications.
Every cycle the main processor doesn't need to spend managing crap
like disk and terminal I/O is a cycle that can be spent executing
application code.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007