From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by pneumatic-tube.sgi.com (980327.SGI.8.8.8-aspam/980310.SGI-aspam) via ESMTP id KAA06567 for <@external-mail-relay.sgi.com:linux-mm@kvack.org>; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:28:38 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (wje@liveoak.engr.sgi.com) Received: from liveoak.engr.sgi.com (liveoak.engr.sgi.com [150.166.40.92]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id KAA03498 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:27:46 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (wje@liveoak.engr.sgi.com) From: "William J. Earl" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14356.37630.420222.582735@liveoak.engr.sgi.com> Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:27:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: page faults In-Reply-To: References: Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Linux MM List-ID: Eric W. Biederman writes: ... > If the hardware cannot support two processors hitting the region simultaneously, > (support would be worst case the graphics would look strange) > you could have problems. ... One could reasonably take the view that a threads-aware graphics library should be thread-safe. That is, if the hardware needs to have concurrent threads in a single process serialize access to the hardware, then the library plugin for that hardware should do the required serialization. This of course the neglects the question of whether a broken user-mode program could damage the hardware, but then a broken single-threaded user-mode program, with no other programs using the hardware, could just as easily damage the hardware. That is, if the hardware is not safe for direct access in general, threading does not make it any less safe. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/