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Linux Kernel To Have Stable Userspace Drive
liquidat writes "Linus Torvalds has included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. The last patch to Linus' tree included the new API elements. The idea is to make life easier for driver developers: 'This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.'"
The primary difference in performance between a user space driver and a kernel space one is not one of overall performance but one of latency. USB is crap anyway, I doubt you would notice a difference. (and USB2 never actually produces real-world performance even all that close to the kind of speed you're talking about, although any $5 IEEE1394 card will very closely approach its theoretical maximum if you have fast enough peripherals. If I had only two computers, I would network them via firewire.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Always happy to play.