Any vaguely modern x86 is using bus mastering DMA and has been for years. Similarly any higher end box tends to have good hardware assisted I/O subsystems.
The limits tend to be the I/O devices and the busses on most platforms PCI bus is reaching the upper limit of its useful life, and only expensive boards have PCI-X slots. Another limit is memory bandwidth - which does matter more and more the larger a set of jobs a machine is running, the more jobs the less useful the cache tends to be, and the less able it is to paper over underlying weaknesses in the system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
