Re: VFAT kernel considerations

[Michael Schwingen <rincewind@tubul.dascon.de>]

On Wed, May 20, 1998 at 10:27:00AM -0400, Martin-Eric Racine wrote:
> Generally speaking, the only drive that would require a cache (IMHO)
> is A, because its access is always blocking.  Most modern hard-disks
> already cache the data by design, so it should be fast enough.

Not automatically.

When you have multiple pending requests for the disk, you can postpone the
writes and do the reads first. That way, the programs which wait for the
read data will be able to get back to running state earlier than when doing
the writes first.

Furthermore, the SCSI bus on TT/Falcon is not very fast ... so a cache in
memory gets much more bandwith than the cache on disk.

Whether you (or your applications) need the performance increase this may
offer is your decision - however, I would like the possibility to decide
that myself and not be told 'you dont need this'.

cu
Michael
-- 
Michael Schwingen, Ahornstrasse 36, 52074 Aachen