Jérôme Glisse felt that the time had come for the Linux kernel to address seriously the issue of having many different types of memory installed on a single running system. There was main system memory and device-specific memory, and associated hierarchies regarding which memory to use at which time and under which circumstances. This complicated new situation, Jérôme said, was actually now the norm, and it should be treated as such.
The physical connections between the various CPUs and devices and RAM chips—that is, the bus topology—also was relevant, because it could influence the various speeds of each of those components.
