SoftICE, BoundsChecker and the like are not running on my production
environment either. Directly mapping hardware into user space is a MAJOR
security hole. That is why Window 9x is still around. I would differ with
you on graphics performance being the reason Windows is usable. I’ve had
more problems and incompatibilities caused by poor graphics implementations
than anything else. Do we all remember the infamous lockups caused by
Matrox video cards hogging the PCI bus to the point other devices timed out?
If you’re doing that level of graphics, get a graphics-oriented OS/HW setup,
like the older Silicon Graphics engines. If the system won’t stay up, it’s
not usable. Period.
Greg
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Moreira, Alberto
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 9:27 AM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process addr
ess space
Serious computer users, eh ? I thought I was one, but hey, what do I know.
First of all, going for graphics performance doesn’t necessarily make the
system any less stable. Second, if Windows is at all usable, a good portion
of it is due to the speed of the graphics subsystem. Third, most graphics
subsystems are on the AGP bus, which is, or should be, quite independent of
what happens in PCI space. Fourth, graphics isn’t about a device driver -
graphics performance is a vertically integrated endeavor, that involves ring
3 software, ring 0 software, and hardware. In fact, many of us would like to
see a direct app to hardware path, and a full migration of driver
functionality to the chip itself.
And I could easily turn the table on this one. What do I care about
Microsoft’s edicts if I’m into big time graphics ? If I don’t need that
extra graphics performance, that’s easy enough, I can get myself a legacy
video board, and presto, problem solved.
What we do have to get away from, IMHO, is the straightjacket imposed by the
current party-line way of writing drivers. And let me put it this way, if
you cringe at the relatively mild liberties graphics people take with the
system, I wonder what your reaction would be to what we do within SoftIce or
BoundsChecker, or even TrueTime ? Yet we don’t crash systems any more than
anybody else.
Alberto.
-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 10:00 AM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process addr
ess spac e
If your requirements for graphics are so tight you should consider moving to
a dedicated special-purpose OS instead of making Windows less stable and
less compatible. I for one don’t need balls-to-the-wall graphics
performance and I would be willing to bet that 95+% of the Windows NT/2k
users feel the same. In order for NT/2k to be acceptable to most serious
users, it must be rock-solid stable. Rebooting all the time to clear a
lockup caused by lazy driver writers or to get that last 2% graphics
performance is unacceptable. It’s also annoying when you have an SMP
machine or a cPCI machine and it won’t run because some device driver writer
didn’t follow Microsoft’s edicts and failed to take into account multiple
PCI busses behind a PCI bridge or 64 bit PCI busses. It’s time we followed
the proper way of doing things and move this hairy razor-edge crap to Window
9x.
Sorry for the rant, but I do serious work where the computer must remain
stable and the attitude of “performance at all costs” won’t cut it anymore.
Greg
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