binary Mach distribution for 386

[Melinda Shore]

In article <1991Jan07.152536.28530 at scuzzy.in-berlin.de> src at scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) writes:
>what a pitty, will Mach 3.0 have the main "kernel" components (except
>the message passing et al) in seperate processes?

Yes, version 3.0 is the first "kernelized" version.  It's running
with a BSD single server, but really isn't ready for commercial
release, especially not into the 386 market.

>i always considered
>this one of the main advantages.

I don't.  The idea is nice, but it's generally pretty slow to run on
top of a micro-kernel (Chorus is an exception).  You pay in the form
of more context switching and more data movement.  A lot of the
performance problems have been worked out of 3.0, but there's still
some work to be done.  The *real* advantage of Mach is the abstractions
that it provides the programmer.  
-- 
               Software longa, hardware brevis
Melinda Shore                                 shore at mtxinu.com
mt Xinu                              ..!uunet!mtxinu.com!shore