This patch adds a new preemption model: 'Voluntary Kernel Preemption'. The
3 models can be selected from a new menu:
(X) No Forced Preemption (Server)
( ) Voluntary Kernel Preemption (Desktop)
( ) Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)
we still default to the stock (Server) preemption model.
Voluntary preemption works by adding a cond_resched()
(reschedule-if-needed) call to every might_sleep() check. It is lighter
than CONFIG_PREEMPT - at the cost of not having as tight latencies. It
represents a different latency/complexity/overhead tradeoff.
It has no runtime impact at all if disabled. Here are size stats that show
how the various preemption models impact the kernel's size:
text data bss dec hex filename
3618774 547184 179896 4345854 424ffe vmlinux.stock
3626406 547184 179896 4353486 426dce vmlinux.voluntary +0.2%
3748414 548640 179896 4476950 445016 vmlinux.preempt +3.5%
voluntary-preempt is +0.2% of .text, preempt is +3.5%.
This feature has been tested for many months by lots of people (and it's
also included in the RHEL4 distribution and earlier variants were in Fedora
as well), and it's intended for users and distributions who dont want to
use full-blown CONFIG_PREEMPT for one reason or another.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
The only sane way to clean up the current 3 lock_kernel() variants seems to
be to remove the spinlock-based BKL implementations altogether, and to keep
the semaphore-based one only. If we dont want to do that for whatever
reason then i'm afraid we have to live with the current complexity. (but
i'm open for other cleanup suggestions as well.)
To explore this possibility we'll (at a minimum) have to know whether the
semaphore-based BKL works fine on plain SMP too. The patch below enables
this.
The patch may make sense in isolation as well, as it might bring
performance benefits: code that would formerly spin on the BKL spinlock
will now schedule away and give up the CPU. It might introduce performance
regressions as well, if any performance-critical code uses the BKL heavily
and gets overscheduled due to the semaphore. I very much hope there is no
such performance-critical codepath left though.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This patch consolidates the CONFIG_PREEMPT and CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL
preemption options into kernel/Kconfig.preempt. This, besides reducing
source-code, also enables more centralized tweaking of preemption related
options.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
