Re: what's next for the linux kernel?

[Dave Neuer <mr.fred.smoothie@pobox.com>]

On 10/5/05, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net> wrote:
>
>  where it all goes a bit pearshaped with that chicken-and-egg vicious
>  cycle is if the bottom drops out of 65nm and 45nm processes, such that
>  _even_ the top uniprocessor mass-market chip manufacturers are forced
>  down a parallel processing line.
>
>  my point is: we're starting to see evidence of that happening
>  (small-scale, 2-cores, 2-hyperthreads, talk of 4-cores, etc.
>  even the X-Box 360 PPC 3x2)
>
>  _therefore_, i invite people who do linux kernel development
>  to think ahead - to take a _lead_ for once instead of waiting
>  for hardware to drop into their laps, at which point it is once
>  again too late, the hardware design decisions will have
>  already been made by someone else, and you will be treated
>  like second class citizens.  again.

With all due respect (and I do believe some is due); your comment
above makes no sense. Operating system designers design software to
operate on existing systems -- often doing as much as possible to
ensure that the design supports lots of different systems. However, _a
neccessary prerequisite_ for that activity is "hardware dropping into
their laps." You warn that "the hardware design decisions will have
already been made by someone else;" but that is the order in which it
_neccessarily_ works! What hardware designer out there spends his day
looking around for as-yet-unused (and hence untested) operating
systems that run on some hypothetical yet-to-be-designed hardware and
say to themselves, "ah, that looks nice -- I think I can design some
hardware that will run that software _really well_?"

Your argument defies logic, and it's that fact -- not your intentions
-- that makes this thread so tiresome.

Dave
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