New WB Multithread?
27-Apr-90 07:01:55
Sb: #99996-New WB Multithread?
Fm: Gabe J. Feder 76117,1163
To: Ethan Solomita 70137,3271
OK, that's not so bad. After all that would require additional technology
that would have slowed the release of the 3000, which Commodore could NOT
have afforded at this point. You have to have more intelligent arbitration
of Hard disk requests than the OS now supplies.
What would be neat is something like what Novell does with its Network OS,
where all requests are queued in what they call an "elevator seeking"
algorithm. They are positioned by the controller in order of position on
the disk relative to where the heads are currently positioned. If the
request is towards the center and the armature is going outward, it is
placed on a queue that is to be satisfied when the arm starts back inward;
If the arm is already on the sweep inward, it gets queued for the next
sweep.
–Gabe