Interesting analysis of linux kernel threading by IBM

[Peter Rival]

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.

No offense, but it is this type of thinking that will keep Linux out of the
datacenter.  What you must say it is not a typical (or realistic) workload _for
me_.  Hundreds of tasks is trivial here - we have systems running with well over
100 users actively working that are two or more generations old (that's a much
bigger thing for Alpha than for Intel).  On our newer systems we fully expect
hundreds, if not thousands, of tasks.  The more commercially accepted Linux
becomes, the more common large configurations are going to be, and we should be
thinking about that now - not when we're being shot all over creation for not
doing what everyone said we could (ala WinNT).

Just my $0.02....

 - Pete


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