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From: John Richard Moser <nigelenki@comcast.net>
To: Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortel.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Can context switches be faster?
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:23:29 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <452EA441.6070703@comcast.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <452E9E47.8070306@nortel.com>

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Chris Friesen wrote:
> John Richard Moser wrote:
> 
>> 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 Xscale is a fairly special beast, and it's context-switch times are
> pretty slow by default.
> 
> Here are some context-switch times from lmbench on a modified 2.6.10
> kernel. Times are in microseconds:
> 
> cpu        clock speed    context switch   
> pentium-M    1.8GHz        0.890
> dual-Xeon    2GHz        7.430
> Xscale        700MHz        108.2
> dual 970FX    1.8GHz        5.850
> ppc 7447    1GHz        1.720
> 
> Reducing the Xscale time by a factor of 30 would basically bring it into
> line with the other uniprocessor machines.
> 

That's a load more descriptive :D

0.890 uS, 0.556uS/cycle, that's barely 2 cycles you know.  (Pentium M)
PPC performs similarly, 1 cycle should be about 1uS.

> Chris
> 

- --
    We will enslave their women, eat their children and rape their
    cattle!
                  -- Bosc, Evil alien overlord from the fifth dimension
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  reply	other threads:[~2006-10-12 20:23 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2006-10-12 15:44 Can context switches be faster? John Richard Moser
2006-10-12 15:53 ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-12 17:19 ` Russell King
2006-10-12 18:25   ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-12 18:37     ` Arjan van de Ven
2006-10-12 18:56       ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-12 19:02         ` Arjan van de Ven
2006-10-13 11:05       ` James Courtier-Dutton
2006-10-13 14:51         ` Chase Venters
2006-10-12 18:20 ` Phillip Susi
2006-10-12 18:29   ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-13  2:53     ` Andrew James Wade
2006-10-13  5:29       ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-13 16:56         ` Andrew James Wade
2006-10-13 17:24           ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-12 19:57 ` Chris Friesen
2006-10-12 20:23   ` John Richard Moser [this message]
2006-10-12 20:29     ` Arjan van de Ven
2006-10-12 20:36       ` John Richard Moser
2006-10-12 20:35     ` Jeremy Fitzhardinge
2006-10-13 23:32       ` Andreas Mohr
2006-10-13 23:47         ` David Lang
2006-10-14  0:14         ` Jeremy Fitzhardinge
2006-10-14  0:30         ` Alan Cox
2006-10-14  0:14           ` Jeremy Fitzhardinge

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