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The wheel of reincarnation turns again. Back in mainframe days, "channel controllers", the subsystems that controlled storage devices, were very programmable.
by anamax 6y ago
The wheel of reincarnation turns again.
Back in mainframe days, "channel controllers", the subsystems that controlled storage devices, were very programmable. At some points in time, it made sense to off-load as much as possible from the CPU onto the channel controller. At other points in time, the reverse was true.
For a couple of decades, we've had dumb storage devices. Now with some of the NVMe stuff, we're moving back towards smart "storage".
Linux in an SSD is the same idea.
- als0 6y agoDisk controllers have been "smart" for the last 15 years. There's just a desire to run Linux instead of a barebones RTOS.
- StillBored 6y agoLot longer than 15 years. There were ISA SCSI controllers that had micro-controllers which could be programmed at some level. The symbios SCRIPTS come to mind which were common on the 53Cxx controllers. https://www.manualslib.com/manual/96635/Lsi-Symbios-Sym8953u.html?page=12 https://www.manualslib.com/manual/96635/Lsi-Symbios-Sym8953u... This has continued on raid/fibre/nvmeof/etc boards.