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Modern Operating Systems by Herbert Bos and Andrew S. Tanenb...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf
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Modern Operating Systems by Herbert Bos and Andrew...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf-M ODERN O PERATING S YSTEMS
Modern Operating Systems by Herbert...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf-M ODERN O PERATING S YSTEMS
Page 586
SEC. 8.2
MULTICOMPUTERS
555
course, the message will not yet have been sent, but the sender is not hindered by
this fact. The disadvantage of this method is that every outgoing message has to be
copied from user space to kernel space. With many network interfaces, the mes-
sage will have to be copied to a hardware transmission buffer later anyway, so the
first copy is essentially wasted. The extra copy can reduce the performance of the
system considerably.
The second solution is to interrupt (signal) the sender when the message has
been fully sent to inform it that the buffer is once again available. No copy is re-
quired here, which saves time, but user-level interrupts make programming tricky,
difficult, and subject to race conditions, which makes them irreproducible and
nearly impossible to debug.
The third solution is to make the buffer copy on write, that is, to mark it as read
only until the message has been sent.
If the buffer is reused before the message has
been sent, a copy is made. The problem with this solution is that unless the buffer
is isolated on its own page, writes to nearby variables will also force a copy. Also,
extra administration is needed because the act of sending a message now implicitly
affects the read/write status of the page. Finally, sooner or later the page is likely to
be written again, triggering a copy that may no longer be necessary.
Thus the choices on the sending side are
1.
Blocking send (CPU idle during message transmission).
2.
Nonblocking send with copy (CPU time wasted for the extra copy).
3.
Nonblocking send with interrupt (makes programming difficult).
4.
Copy on write (extra copy probably needed eventually).
Under normal conditions, the first choice is the most convenient, especially if mul-
tiple threads are available, in which case while one thread is blocked trying to
send, other threads can continue working. It also does not require any kernel buff-
ers to be managed.
Furthermore, as can be seen from comparing Fig. 8-19(a) to
Fig. 8-19(b), the message will usually be out the door faster if no copy is required.
For the record, we would like to point out that some authors use a different cri-
terion to distinguish synchronous from asynchronous primitives. In the alternative
view, a call is synchronous only if the sender is blocked until the message has been
received and an acknowledgement sent back (Andrews, 1991).
In the world of
real-time communication, synchronous has yet another meaning, which can lead to
confusion, unfortunately.
Just as
send
can be blocking or nonblocking, so can
receive
.
A blocking call
just suspends the called until a message has arrived. If multiple threads are avail-
able, this is a simple approach.
Alternatively, a nonblocking
receive
just tells the
kernel where the buffer is and returns control almost immediately.
An interrupt
can be used to signal that a message has arrived. However, interrupts are difficult
to program and are also quite slow, so it may be preferable for the receiver to poll
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