Linux Device Driver Emulation in Mach
Shantanu Goel and Dan Duchamp
Computer Science Department
Columbia University
Abstract
We describe the design and performance of code added to the Mach
microkernel (Mach 4.0, version UK02p21) that permits one to build a
Mach kernel that includes unmodified Linux device drivers. We have
written emulation code to support all Linux 1.3.35 network and SCSI
drivers for the ISA and PCI I/O buses. Emulation increases latency,
but very little. The degree depends on both device and operation, and
varies from 2 microseconds for receiving small (60 byte) network
packets up to 197 microseconds for writing 16KB to an ISA SCSI device.
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