SHARED I/O IN A PARTITIONED PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT

摘要

A partitioned processing system is disclosed wherein applications in a plurality of partitions can share an I/O operation program (or device driver). In one embodiment, memory is shared between the partitions to provide a communication path (interface) to the driver. In one embodiment, a computing system has a first partition including a first operating system and a first block of system memory. The computing system further has a second partition including a second operating system and a second block of system memory. An application in the first partition initiates an I/O request using an interface, and an I/O operation program in the second partition receives the I/O request. The I/O device driver then uses the interface to communicate the results of said I/O request with the application.