Hardware Abstraction Layer

[pepito]

Someone have information about the subject:

Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

Thank you,

[gaf]

Hi pepito,
I suppose you mean Microsoft's HAL ?

It's job is to a offer more abstract interface of the underlying hardware to the rest of the OS (kernel and executive) in order to make it less hardware dependant and thus easier to port.
* DMA
* Port I/O and memory I/O
* device register
* system wide device addresses on different buses
* time keeping, timers
* synchronisation of MP systems

All communication with the hardware is supposed to go through the HAL but there are some exceptions like DirectX that circumvent it to gain more performance.

regards,
gaf

[pepito]

Thank you for your response, all is because I have been thinking about a distinctive OS design:

In contrast with UNIX, I would like to base the design of the system on the idea that everything is a device (instead of a file), but according to it type occurs a special treatment to them...

The memory is a device handled through the memory manager; the processor is a device handled through the processes manager; the disc is a device handled through the file manager; and all the other devices (peripheral) are handle through a generic manager called device manager (E/S system).

It is really a new idea?