On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, at 9:19am, Michael O'Donnell wrote: >> People make such a huge deal about something being implemented in >> "hardware" vs "software". In most cases, the only difference >> between them is that hardware is harder to change. > > In this watchpoint case I fail to see how the HW solution can be described > as anything but a huge win.
Well, I suppose it depends on the implementation. My understanding of low-level hardware design stops at the "basic theory" point, and not much of that. But I am curious: How does the hardware "watch" a memory location without incurring any overhead? It would seem to me that there must be some sort of cost involved. > I assume we can agree that there is a continuum of problems that can be > solved with either HW or SW (and these days the boundary between the two > is blurrier than ever) but in commodity systems I assume you'd agree that > modems, NICs, SCSI adapters, etc are all examples where the corresponding > SW solution would more or less have to suck by comparison... Oh, certainly. As you say, the line is blurrier than ever, which was what I was trying to get at. Indeed, high-end NICs and SCSI cards these days often have quite a bit of processing power onboard, with firmware to drive it. To the host PC, it is a hardware device, but close-up, it resembles a computer in itself. -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
