> Much of the intelligence > actually resides in the device driver. It is that secret sauce > that gets you good performance. In theory it could be pushed > down, but it takes CPU, memory, and memory bandwidth that may > not be cost effective there.
That would entail a really intelligent controller, which brings us back to a cache, does it not, this time hidden inside a black box. I have been thinking that the obsession with SMP has a negative impact on diverse engineering where intelligent peripherals take over operations that are too slow or too demanding on the generic CPU. Smacks of AoE to me, with a lot more packed into the A. But I'm just an old software developer with a hobbyist interest in electronic engineering and my opinions are not backed by much research. ++L
