From: Kevin Quick <kquick@iphase.com> Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 14:14:12 -0500 (CDT) To: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu Subject: UDI VCR analogy There's a great deal of documentation on the UDI web site (http://www.sco.com/UDI) which describes what UDI is... all the way from general white papers to the explicit specification. I realize most of you don't necessarily have time to dig into this information but would like to understand what UDI is all about. Therefore I'm offering this crude analogy. Please understand that this is just an analogy and don't take it too far, but here goes: UDI is analogous to the VHS specification for video tape recorders. VHS completely specifies how the tape and the tape player interact. This includes physical components (size, location of wheels, width of tape, where to place the playback and record heads, etc), the mechanical components (how fast to move the tape across the heads), and the electrical components (where on the tape the video is recorded, where the sound is recorded, what the formats are). If the VHS specification neglected to specify any of these components, then tapes wouldn't be portable. Because of the VHS standard, you know that any VCR marked as VHS supports tapes will play any VHS tape that you buy or rent. Now think of the VCR as the operating system and the tape as the device driver. UDI is a specification which completely describes the interface between the driver and the operating system... no OS-specific code is found in the driver. VHS does not tell you what to put on your tape or dictate the quality of the product. UDI does not require you to have a special type of hardware interface and similarly does not dictate the quality of the driver written. VHS does not tell you what features your VCR may or may not have or how it's packaged or how much it costs. UDI does not impose similar limitations on the Operating System beyond the fact that it must conform to the UDI specification just as VCRs conform to VHS specifications. How does I2O fit into this? Keeping the analogy rough, let's say that I2O is a new audio encoding format designed to provide surround sound separate channels and superlative quality and signal-to-noise rations. However, this audio encoding is wisely backward compatible. Now you can get an "I2O audio" recorded VHS tape and it'll work in a standard VHS VCR but it sounds fantastic in an "I2O VCR". I'll stop there... I think you get the idea. For a better understanding, the documentation available from the web site is really the best place to go, or ask me more specific questions. -- ________________________________________________________________________ Kevin Quick Interphase Corporation Engineering Dallas, Texas kquick@iphase.com http://www.iphase.com 214.654.5173 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/