> > You could put together a pretty neat machine with 2 of these ;-)
> > Anyone know the score ?
>
> OpenPIC only.. APIC is patented (I think) by Intel, making clone SMP boxes
And so should it be, Intel has pushed innovation well above known limits ;)
Imagine that the APIC, is the first known interrupt controller able to
lose level sensitive interrupts. After about 10 years working with real
time buses (VME...), which all use level sensitive hardware interrupts,
(the only ones that make sense BTW, edge triggered device interrupts are a
braindead concept) I took for granted that no level sensitive interrupt
could ever be lost. Intel has shown me that I was wrong, and should be
praised for it ;) It truly takes the R&D resources of a multibillion
dollar company to come up with such a new concept ;)
BTW: OpenPIC support has been implemented for Linux/PPC and it works
very well at least on UP. It's in the recent 2.1.xx source trees.
And the interface is so much cleaner than the A(wkward)PIC, but
AFAIK the x86 support has never been tested.
Gabriel.