device atpic to be deprecated?

[Scott Long]

Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:

> While searching the mailing lists recently on an unrelated subject, I happened across a message mentioning the intended removal of "device atpic" in 7.0.  So, I tried building a kernel without it on my RELENG_6 amd64 box (nVidia nForce 3 chipset) and discovered that it was unable to mount the root slice.
> 
> Naturally, I'm a little concerned about this.  :-)
> 
> Is the plan still in effect to abolish this device?
> 

There might have been hope at one time that amd64 would not
need it.  I beleive that that ioapic is part of the amd64
system spec that motherboard/chipset makers must implement.
However, engineering inertia is hard to overcome, and it's
likely that this is just a fantasy.  For i386, it simply has
no chance of ever going away.  My guess is that it'll take
a next generation platform to completely do away with ISA,
ATPIC, and other legacy components.  Hmmm.... maybe that
next-gen platform is the MacIntel?

Scott