Messages in this thread | | | From | (Linus Torvalds) | Subject | Re: Interesting scheduling times | Date | 18 Sep 1998 00:12:41 GMT |
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In article <6trfc3$io7$1@palladium.transmeta.com>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> wrote: >In article <199809170431.OAA20382@vindaloo.atnf.CSIRO.AU>, >Richard Gooch <rgooch@atnf.csiro.au> wrote: >> >>More importantly, I'm surprised by the slowdown from 2.1.104 to >>2.1.122-pre2. > >What happened is that the very latest 2.1.x kernels are using a software >context switch, rather than just a jump through a task-gate and using >the hardware context switch code.
Happily I checked some more, just to make sure, and profiled the kernel.
Yes, it happened during the switch-over to a software task-switch routine, but the reason the numbers got worse for some people is simply that I screwed up the floating point save code, and it saved _every_ time through instead of doing the lazy save it was meant to do.
The effect of this is not huge, but it's certainly noticeable. With that fixed, the software context switch is pretty comparable to the hardware one.
2.1.123 should have this context switch slowdown fixed.
Linus
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