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Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 21:13:54 +0200
From: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
To: Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortel.com>
Subject: Re: question about softirqs
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Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>, netdev@vger.kernel.org,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>, linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org,
	Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>, paulus@samba.org,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>, David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
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On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 01:04:09PM -0600, Chris Friesen wrote:
> Andi Kleen wrote:
> 
> > network packets are normally processed by the network packet interrupt's
> > softirq or alternatively in the NAPI poll loop.
> 
> If we have a high priority task, ksoftirqd may not get a chance to run.

In this case the next interrupt will also process them. It will just
go more slowly because interrupts limit the work compared to ksoftirqd.

-Andi

-- 
ak@linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only.