On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
> Its an interesting question whether it belongs in the kernel or libc.
> Discuss ;)
Hmm, emulating a missing part of CPU seems more natural in the kernel
mode. It's completely transparent -- no difference to userland software
whether there is a real part or an emulator.
The libc approach has the advantage of being unprivileged -- a fault in
an emulator cannot itself bring a system down. It's non-transparent,
though -- it may give interesting effects when debugging.
> Also we missed a trick on the x86 and I want to fix that one day, which is
> to have an __fpu ELF segment so if you boot an FPU emu kernel on an fpu
> box you regain 47K
A good idea, even though hardly anyone needs the emulator for i386 these
days. ;-)
--
+ Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+ e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
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