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SubjectRe: SCO: "thread creation is about a thousand times faster than on native Linux"
On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Joerg Pommnitz wrote:

> Hi Lists,
> The Register has an article about the Linux compatibility layer
> for Unixware.
> The article claims
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12733.html
>
> quote> SCO's Juergen Kienhoefer tells us that by mapping clone processes
> quote> directly onto UnixWare's native threads, huge performance gains
> quote> can be realised. "Basically thread creation is about a thousand
> quote> times faster than on native Linux," he said. The performance boost
> quote> could particularly benefit applications such as Domino, according
> to
> quote> Kienhoefer.
>
> Somehow I doubt this. I could believe that the glibc pthread layer
> causes a lot of overhead for the thread creation, but I cannot
> imagine that they get clone 1000 times faster than the Linux kernel.
>
> Comments?

It is plausible that individual _lwp_create(2) is faster than individual
clone(CLONE_VM) one (possibly between 5x and 10x times, the 1000x figure
is ridiculous). However, one should look a bit further and ask if native
kernel-level UW7 lwps are delivering the same set of rich functionality as
Linux clone'd tasks. IMHO, they simply don't. So one has to add all the
overhead of turning a "raw" lwp into a useful and useable thread, e.g. as
used by userspace thread concept. If you do that, no doubt you will find
that Linux performance is greater than of any commercial alternatives.

So, until Juergen points us to a ftp://... URL where one can download his
Linux kernel emulation layer for UW7 kernel (and, of course, I assume no
GPL breakage is done?) which I can pkgadd on my UW7 machine and run some
multi-threaded Linux app and see it "1000x times faster", I will ignore
the theregister article as meaningless hype. Go and thou do likewise ;)

Regards,
Tigran

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