[linux-audio-dev] Re: [announce] [patch] Voluntary Kernel Preemption Patch

[Scott Wood]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 08:43:08PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Scott Wood <scott at timesys.com> wrote:
> > What aspects of it do you find unnecessary?  The second thread is
> > needed to maintain the current high/low priority semantics (without
> > that, you'll either starve regular tasks with a lot of softirqs, or
> > starve softirqs with a busy userspace, depending on how you set the
> > priority of the softirq thread).
> 
> what high/low semantics do you mean, other than the ordering of softirq
> sources? (which is currently implemented via the __do_softirq() loop
> first looking at the highest prio softirq.) So splitting up ksoftirqd
> into two pieces seems like a separate issue.

I meant the current split between immediate-context softirqs (which
are repesented in the patch by the high-priority ksoftirqd) and the
low-priority thread which is used to avoid starvation while allowing
softirqs to continue running if the system's otherwise more or less
idle.

> > BTW, it was my patch; Yarroll only submitted it to the list (as he
> > stated at the time).
> 
> ok - sorry about the misattribution!

It's OK; I just don't want him to be blamed for my bugs. :-)

-Scott