Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 06 Aug 1999 15:54:18 +0100 (IST) | From | Caolan McNamara <> | Subject | offtopic: userland active context switches ? |
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During a system call the userspace process switches to kernel mode and the kernel executes the code on behalf of the process. Is it possible to create a client/server pair both in userspace where the client can pull off the same context switch trick and run code in the server along the same lines ?
Just to stave off the inevitable I don't have in mind a library, and i don't have in mind normal ipc/rpc. What I'm looking at is the paper at http://reality.sgi.com/opengl/d11/d11.html in particular http://reality.sgi.com/opengl/d11/node7.html, where the author suggest that the X server could be implemented using "active contexts". Where a client X app can context switch to become the X server to execute X calls. Short circuiting the normal transport mechanism and giving a potential speedup for X.
Now I haven't been able to figure out how to actually implement even a simple mechanism to achieve this, but then i'm not all that good. But seeing as a kernel can achieve this, i reckon this is a good a forum as any to get some pointers on the practicalities of doing something like this, though isn't the mechanism it uses only possible for the kernel alone ?
The D11 concept seemed to be a goody, until I rapidly hit the edges of my knowledge, anyone have any ideas. Just in the general case of achieving something like this. Whether its an appropiate mechanism to use, or whether or not GGI/DRI/DGA/Berlin/Y is better to implement is outside the scope of whats puzzling me.
C.
Real Life: Caolan McNamara * Doing: MSc in HCI Work: Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie * Phone: +353-86-8790257 URL: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan * Sig: an oblique strategy What are the sections sections of?
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