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Re:I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and El... by dkersten on Friday May 03, 2019 @04:17PM (#19821876)
So would it be correct to say that functionally, it’s similar to DMA, but the API is different because “channels” expose a consistent interface while DMA doesn’t?
Re:I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and El... by kazinator on Friday May 03, 2019 @04:50PM (#19822153)
Channels only expose a consistent interface as long as there is no other mainframe other than an IBM one, or compatible.

Once you have two, and you want portable applications, using channel I/O instructions directly inline goes out the window; you need an API.

Re:I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and El... by marshray on Friday May 03, 2019 @05:10PM (#19822310)
One could say this about any library or OS feature. Berkeley Sockets, for example.

Porting code is easier when there are portable APIs. But that doesn't diminish from the quality of the abstraction.