Answer to: What is a kernel?

[Jonathan R. Lusky]

John S Gwynne writes:
> hardware. By the use of semaphores, the resource of an ADC can be
> allocated to the coolant measurement task, air temp measurement task, O2
> sensor measurement task, etc. All of which can run at different rates and be
> unaware of the others. Bottom line: a large problem like EFI can be broken up
> into several smaller tasks that may only need a few lines of C-code!
> 
> It's an alternative to writing one long "loop" of software that must keep
> track of timing and on which loops to measure what and when to do this or
> that. The kernel will do all that for you. Ok... It's a luxury... :)

I'm taking Operating Systems right now, just went over semaphores a few
weeks ago.  We were "told" that semaphore operations (P & V) are pretty
expensive respect to cpu cycles.  Is that a problem in the real world,
or is it insiginificant compred to the number of spare CPU cycles
we've got nowadays (with respect to EFI controllers :)?


-- 
Jonathan R. Lusky                        lusky at knuth.mtsu.edu
http://frank.mtsu.edu:8001/~lusky/          (615) 455-9915
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