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    SubjectRe: [RFC 0/4] dynamically allocate arch specific system vectors
    Dean Nelson wrote:
    >
    > We (SGI) need somewhere around eight vectors.
    >
    > There are two kernel modules, sgi-gru and sgi-xp (in drivers/misc), that
    > each need two vectors. And there's the broadcast assist unit (BAU) that is
    > involved in tlb shootdown on uv, which currently uses statically reserved
    > vector 0xf8 (UV_BAU_MESSAGE -- see uv_bau_init()). I know of a debugger that
    > also uses 0xf8 because it was previously available until UV_BAU_MESSAGE came
    > along. The BAU would be happy with a dynamically allocated system vector.
    > We have a couple of other things in the works that also need vectors.
    >
    > All of these eight or so vectors are only meaningful on SGI uv systems.
    >

    Are these kernel-internal vectors, or exposed to userspace (i.e. the INT
    instruction works in userspace)? From what I'm gathering, I think this
    is the former.

    There are the occational user who wants fixed user-space addressible
    vectors, effectively as secondary system call entry vectors (lguest is
    the only in-kernel user that I know of); those need to be static and
    non-conflicting, which is kind of difficult. It seems to me that
    anything else probably should be possible to be dynamic.

    -hpa


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