Not necessarily *getting* less reliable; rather, consistently not very reliable

Not necessarily *getting* less reliable; rather, consistently not very reliable

Posted Jul 10, 2006 19:13 UTC (Mon) by arjan (subscriber, #36785)
In reply to: Not necessarily *getting* less reliable; rather, consistently not very reliable by Richard_J_Neill
Parent article: Survey: Linux kernel quality

3D acceleration runs partially in the kernel, and in case of the binary crud, almost entirely. In addition, X is effectively a ring 3 kernel component, it is in just all aspects part of the kernel entirely; it does DMA, it programs PCI devices etc etc. That means it exposes the same risk as the kernel to the stability of the system...

and with 3D one of the most common failure scenarios is that the 3D card locks up the PCI bus. Not a lot the kernel can do after that to get anything useful out ;)

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