Interesting analysis of linux kernel threading by IBM

[Phillip Ezolt]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Horst von Brand wrote:

> "Davide Libenzi" <davidel en maticad.it> said:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > my patch has great performance ( 80% with 300 tasks ) with a lot of tasks
> > and low overhead ( 1.5% with 2 tasks ).
> > And my patch has 0.00 optimizations about CPU fetches and Co.
> > IMVHO 1-1.5 % of overhead is a price the we can afford given the performace
> > with many tasks.
> > My patch equals the current implementation with 8 tasks.
> 
> So it is a net loss. This machine here (a personal workstation) has
> typically 1 to 3 running tasks.
> 
> Hondreds of tasks is just not a typical (perhaps even realistic)
> workload.

Yes it is.  

If you are running a webserver. 

Or a highly threaded application.

Or a machine with a lot of users.  (For example, a University unix server)

Or an ftp server.  (Where is the Linux equivalent of FreeBSD's ftp.cdrom.com?)

It is really a question of "Where does Linux want to go?"  

If it wants to be a high performance server, Linux needs a new scheduler. 

If it wants to be the most efficient desktop machine, then it doesn't
need it NOW.  However, the average number of programs people are
running on their machine are increasing, not decreasing.  

Linux's real penetration has been in the server market.  Why not make
it the best server it can be?

--Phil

Compaq:  High Performance Server Division/Benchmark Performance Engineering 
---------------- Alpha, The Fastest Processor on Earth --------------------
Phillip.Ezolt en compaq.com        |C|O|M|P|A|Q|        ezolt en perf.zko.dec.com
------------------- See the results at www.spec.org -----------------------


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