Future of the APIC
Future of the APIC
I have just bought a new motherboard, and all the expansion slots on it are PCI-Express. So, with the advent of message signalled interrupts, it occurs to me to wonder whether the APIC has a future as the chip through which ISA interrupts are routed, and little more besides. To put it another way, is the APIC about to become "legacy" before its time?
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Combuster
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Re: Future of the APIC
The (Local) APIC is the part of the processor handling the interrupts from built-in devices, IRQ lines, MSIs and other processors. Even if you remove IRQs as a source, it still handles all interrupts and you rendered only a minority of its functionality unused.
It won't go anywhere.
I assume you were talking about the IOAPIC instead (which is actually a dumb thing that converts interrupt lines to interrupt messages)?
It won't go anywhere.
I assume you were talking about the IOAPIC instead (which is actually a dumb thing that converts interrupt lines to interrupt messages)?
Last edited by Combuster on Sat Nov 26, 2011 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Future of the APIC
I was thinking more of the i/o APIC. In spite of the similarity of their names, their functionality is very different.Combuster wrote:The (Local) APIC is the part of the processor handling the interrupts from built-in devices, IRQ lines, MSIs and other processors. Even if you remove IRQs as a source, it still handles all interrupts and you rendered only a minority of its functionality unused.
It won't go anywhere.