Kernel space: Ticket spinlocks
,----[ Quote ]
| Spinlocks are Linux's simplest mechanism for preventing two threads from
| changing the same data. A new kernel feature increases the fairness of
| spinlocks on SMP systems, preventing one thread from being "starved" of
| access.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2008/021208-kernel.html
Related:
Why Vista can't play music properly, blame placed on CPU, Vista innocent
,----[ Quote ]
| Steve Ball, Senior Program Manager for Sound in Windows Vista, explains why
| Vista isn't to blame for the all-singing, all-dancing OS not being able to
| play music properly. Everything but Vista is to blame.
`----
http://digg.com/software/Why_Vista_can_t_play_music_properly_blame_placed_on_CPU_Vista_innocent
Those Dang DPCs Clogging the MMCSS [or "Why Vista Scheduling is Broken"]
,----[ Quote ]
| Critical optimizations such as zero-copy aside, there is no excusable reason
| why processing IP packets should so damagingly affect the system.
|
| [...]
|
| Putting aside the larger problem for the moment, there are several issues
| with this solution. It prioritizes multimedia playback over networking
| performance, which, as the resulting clamor has shown, is not everyone's
| personal policy preference. It is almost assuredly a layering violation. It
| picks a fixed and hard-coded packet limit (ten per millisecond), which won't
| scale across different hardware—think significantly faster processors or
| substantially slower networking drivers. It ignores the commonality of GigE.
| And, finally, the solution is complicated, as the convoluted description and
| resulting bugs in the implementation demonstrate.
`----
http://blogbeebe.blogspot.com/2007/08/robert-love-backs-up-my-very-simple.html
Why Vista sounds worse
,----[ Quote ]
| Changes to how the latest version of Windows handles audio playback has
| caused unexpected quality issues for musicians and consumers alike, reports
| Tim Anderson
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/31/microsoft.technology
Vista team blogs about audio glitches
,----[ Quote ]
| Yesterday, Microsoft's program manager for sound in Windows Vista (what a
| great title!), Steve Ball, posted a blog entry explaining why audio playback
| sometimes gets glitchy in Windows.
`----
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9807976-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Copying files across LAN with Vista is deathly slow
,----[ Quote ]
| Copying files from my XP video capture pc to my Vista pc is 3 times
| slower than copying from my XP video capture PC to my old XP PC.
`----
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/109009593831
The copy process may stop responding when you try to copy files from a server
on a network to a Windows Vista-based computer
,----[ Quote ]
| On a Windows Vista-based computer, when you try to copy files from a
| server on a network, the copy process may stop responding (hang), and
| you may receive a message that resembles the following:
|
| Calculating Time Remaining
|
| 0 minutes remaining
`----
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/931770
Kernel space: Fair user scheduling for Linux
,----[ Quote ]
| The Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) was merged for the 2.6.23 kernel. One CFS
| feature which did not get in, though, was the group scheduling facility.
| Group scheduling makes the CFS fairness algorithm operate in a hierarchical
| fashion: processes are divided into groups, and, within each group, processes
| are scheduled fairly against one another.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/101207-kernel.html
CFS, Focusing on Simplification and Performance
,----[ Quote ]
| He added, "we are now a bit faster than the O(1) scheduler was under
| v2.6.22 - even on 32-bit. The main speedup comes from the avoidance of
| divisions (or shifts) in the wakeup and context-switch fastpaths."
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/CFS_Focusing_on_Simplification_and_Performance
Defining Scheduler Task Groups
,----[ Quote ]
| Srivatsa requested that his patch be merged into Andrew Morton's -mm tree to
| receive more testing...
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Defining_Scheduler_Task_Groups
Linux: Discussing the Really Fair Scheduler
,----[ Quote ]
| Ingo Molnar reviewed Roman Zippel's Really Fair Scheduler code, suggesting
| that much of the work was similar to that which was being done by Peter
| Zijlstra
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Discussing_the_Really_Fair_Scheduler
Linux: The Really Fair Scheduler
,----[ Quote ]
| He offered a mathematical overview of how his new scheduler works, included
| some benchmarks, and reflected back to earlier discussions on the lkml...
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/The_Really_Fair_Scheduler
Linux: The Original Process Scheduler
,----[ Quote ]
| In a June of 1992 posting to the linux-activists mailing list, Linus Torvalds
| described the original Linux scheduler noting, "the scheduler in linux is
| pretty simple, but does a reasonably good job at giving good IO response
| while not being too unfair against cpu-bound processes."
|
| [...]
|
| * 1996-12-23 Modified by Dave Grothe to fix bugs in semaphores and
| * make semaphores SMP safe
| * 1998-11-19 Implemented schedule_timeout() and related stuff
| * by Andrea Arcangeli
| * 2002-01-04 New ultra-scalable O(1) scheduler by Ingo Molnar:
| * hybrid priority-list and round-robin design with
| * an array-switch method of distributing timeslices
| * and per-CPU runqueues. Cleanups and useful suggestions
| * by Davide Libenzi, preemptible kernel bits by Robert Love.
| * 2003-09-03 Interactivity tuning by Con Kolivas.
| * 2004-04-02 Scheduler domains code by Nick Piggin
| * 2007-04-15 Work begun on replacing all interactivity tuning with a
| * fair scheduling design by Con Kolivas.
| * 2007-05-05 Load balancing (smp-nice) and other improvements
| * by Peter Williams
| * 2007-05-06 Interactivity improvements to CFS by Mike Galbraith
| * 2007-07-01 Group scheduling enhancements by Srivatsa Vaddagiri
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/node/14191
Linux: Tuning CFS
,----[ Quote ]
| Nick Piggin used 'git bisect' to track a lmbench regression to the main CFS
| commit, leading to an interesting discussion between Nick and Ingo Molnar.
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/node/14055
Linux: CFS and 3D Gaming
,----[ Quote ]
| Some of the concerns expressed about the Completely Fair Scheduler were
| reports that it might not handle 3D games as well as the SD scheduler.
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/node/14023
Scheduler Fixes
,----[ Quote ]
| Ingo Molnar sent a merge request to Linus Torvalds for the latest CFS fixes.
| CFS, the Completely Fair Scheduler, was merged into the mainline Linux kernel
| in July of 2007. It was first included in the 2.6.23 kernel, released in
| October of 2007.
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Scheduler_Fixes
CFS scheduler to appear in Linux kernel 2.6.23
,----[ Quote ]
| And also credit where credit's due, Con Kolivas was the first one to
| prove via RSDL/SD that 'fair scheduling' is possible and that it
| results in better desktop scheduling.
`----
http://www.linuxinsight.com/cfs-scheduler-to-appear-in-linux-kernel-2.6.23.html
Linux: Linus On CFS vs SD
,----[ Quote ]
| "People who think SD was 'perfect' were simply ignoring reality," Linus
| Torvalds began in a succinct explanation as to why he chose the CFS scheduler
| written by Ingo Molnar instead of the SD scheduler written by Con Kolivas.
`----
http://kerneltrap.org/node/14008
|
|
