Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:44:56 -0400 | From | John Richard Moser <> | Subject | Can context switches be faster? |
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Can context switches be made faster? This is a simple question, mainly because I don't really understand what happens during a context switch that the kernel has control over (besides storing registers).
Linux ported onto the L4-Iguana microkernel is reported to be faster than the monolith[1]; it's not like microkernels are faster, but the L4-Iguana apparently just has super awesome context switching code:
Wombat's context-switching overheads as measured by lmbench on an XScale processor are up to thirty times less than those of native Linux, thanks to Wombat profiting from the implementation of fast context switches in L4-embedded.
The first question that comes into my mind is, obviously, is this some special "fast context switch" code for only embedded systems; or is it possible to work this on normal systems?
The second is, if it IS possible to get faster context switches in general use, can the L4 context switch methods be used in Linux? I believe L4 is BSD licensed-- at least the files in their CVS repo that I looked at have "BSD" stamped on them. Maybe some of the code can be examined, adopted, adapted, etc.
If it's not possible to speed up context switches, the classical question would probably be.. why not? ;) No use knowing a thing and not understanding it; you get situations like this right here... :)
[1]http://l4hq.org/ - -- We will enslave their women, eat their children and rape their cattle! -- Bosc, Evil alien overlord from the fifth dimension -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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