HYDROGEN: Extensibility (by alaric)
Conclusions
This section is where the difference in requirements between a userland VM and a kernel-level HAL really start to become apparent, where we deal with the basics of hardware devices. I've aimed at designing the APIs so they will be efficient on bare metal, without being too inefficient in a POSIX process; and I've defined an ordered means of optional features being handled, which should allow a very minimal HYDROGEN system to be useful in 64KB with lots of space for the application, while allowing a larger implementation to take full advantage of a 16-core 64-bit behemoth with hundreds of gigabytes of RAM and multiple high speed interconnects to storage area networks.
I hope that supporting minimal and massive platforms via the same APIs will help to encourage an economy of design, that will resist the temptation to fill the memory of the massive platforms with bloat!
Wed 15th Jul 2009 11:05 pm 
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