Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 15 May 2008 17:10:57 +0200 | From | Andi Kleen <> | Subject | Re: [announce] "kill the Big Kernel Lock (BKL)" tree |
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John Stoffel wrote: >>>>>> "Andi" == Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> writes: > > Andi> Linus Torvalds wrote: >>> On Thu, 15 May 2008, Andi Kleen wrote: >>>> The goal less being to get rid of BKL in old drivers, but not >>>> requiring BKL in new drivers. Basically all BKL assumptions >>>> in interfaces really should go. >>> No, we really do want to get rid of BKL in old drivers too. Or at least in >>> the interfaces. > > Andi> In the interfaces definitely yes and all subsystems should have > Andi> their own lock_kernel calls, but why in the old drivers? For > Andi> those it's very unlikely they are used on any SMP system anyways > Andi> (e.g. anything depending on CONFIG_ISA) or if they do only on 2 > Andi> CPU systems. > > I'm still running an SMP server with ISA slots.
I do too (although one CPU has died recently), but how many ISA devices do you use in it? Mine used to have a ISA ISDN card, but that was it and then no ISA anymore even though the slots are still in there.
Also on 2 CPU systems BKL is not that critical anyways. It only starts to hurt on larger CPU counts.
-Andi
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