In addition, drivers required for each of the OSes currently available today can keep the support and maintenance cost high. The I 2 O provides a solution to both unanswered questions. The I 2 O architecture provides a cross platform enviroment for both the operating system and the host hardware. Hardware-independence is achieved through a driver division technique. A communication interface sitting between the two modules taking care of the message exchanges.
Modules communicate in forms of message passing.
When the OSM receives the request, it'll translate the request into an I 2 O message and dispatches it to the appropriate HDM for processing. This way, not only the performance is enhanced, also the cost is reduced. We did a preliminary performance comparison in the well known ServerBench testing software by ZD to get you an idea on how I 2 O implemented hardware speeds over a non-I 2 O implemented hardware. The forthcoming Windows 2000 from Microsoft will support it, and for the current NT users, NT I2O driver is currently available for download to support this new feature. I 2 O package.