Compressed executables

[Root Boy Jim]

>In article <1991Jan30.123119.15448 at chvax.uucp> rheiger at chvax.UUCP (Eiger Richard) writes:
>:In article <5453 at bwdls58.UUCP> hwt at bwdlh490.BNR.CA (Henry Troup) writes:
>:>Of course, if you can implement compression in special hardware between the 
>:>disk and the CPU, you can do this with no impact on CPU performance.
>:>
>:I thought of the exact same thing. While we're at it, why not put
>:hardware compressing onto the drives? 

The problem here is that disk drivers access data by block, optimizing
sector rotation and cylinder head motion. If you're gonna send it all to
the disk anyway, you don't save any transfer time. Compressing the
data changes the boundarys where the sectors fall. Many people think
it a bad idea to move layout policy out of the kernel; others
would rather let a smart caching disk do it.
-- 

	Root Boy Jim Cottrell <rbj at uunet.uu.net>
	Close the gap of the dark year in between