[coyotos-dev] Need for revised invocation

[Charles Landau]

At 3:38 PM -0500 2/6/06, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
>On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 10:54 -0800, Charles Landau wrote:
>>  As I've said, I think a kernel-implemented helper domain could set
>>  such a global variable. I'm not yet convinced that all the options
>>  for avoiding user-level scheduling have been exhausted. If they have,
>>  it should be possible to construct a proof that the requirements
>>  cannot be met otherwise.
>
>Why should I have to spend an entire kernel thread (4k register state,
>4k stack) to set a single word to 1?

No, I was referring to a new kernel object that *acts* like a kernel 
thread obeying a known simple program (set word to 1), but is 
implemented optimally. I think you are calling this a "spin-agent". 
It's an agent, but I don't see the "spin" part.

>..., we are reduced to the "kernel thread or user
>thread" argument, and we are arguing about mechanisms rather than dogma.

Yes.