On Thursday, 04/02/2009 at 12:09 EDT, Erik N Johnson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> This has especial benefits visa-vi code re-usability.  In fact, this
> is exactly the design philosophy behind the everything's-a-file model
> in UNIX-type operating systems.  Of course, that metaphor has been
> broken since the advent of the socket, but since then several methods
> of extending the file metaphor to representing a network connection
> have been conceived.

Diag 0x2A8 was created so that anyone who wants to do QDIO-style I/O can
do it without having to infer the operation of the native machine
facilities.  We can change the implementation without worry about the
guest interface, and the device driver author doesn't have to worry about
release-to-release compatibility.

But since VM TCP/IP already uses the native machine facilities for data
transfer, Diag 0x2A8 doesn't help.  Not even in the face of guest mobility
or the advent of new devices.  If a new I/O architecture is required, then
it must be because QDIO doesn't cut it.  The odds of a such a new I/O
architecture fitting the semantics of Diag 0x2A8 are slim.  (If it did,
then they would probably just use QDIO.)  It's the same reason that Diag
0xA4/A8 can't be used with QDIO under the covers - the API semantics are
all wrong.

Alan Altmark
z/VM Development
IBM Endicott

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