

The Xbox Story, Part 2: Gunning for Greenlight - maximilianburke
http://www.vg247.com/2011/08/03/the-xbox-story-part-2-gunning-for-greenlight/

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xilun0
> Well, now I’m telling you that Xbox applications need to run in kernel mode.

wtf?

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maximilianburke
One of the big drawbacks for earlier versions of Direct3D (9 and earlier) on
PC was that draw calls were expensive operations, especially compared to
OpenGL, because they required a trip to kernel land and back again. By moving
the application into kernel mode many of these calls become much less
expensive.

The obvious down-side is that if something goes wrong the whole system is
hosed. This isn't really a problem though because there are no shoddy drivers
written by half-caring vendors on a console, content for the platform had to
be certified to be released for it and was required to not crash, and even if
it does crash it's much less aggravating because, hey, it's a video game and
not your unsaved work that is lost.

