Re: [linux-audio-dev] low-latency scheduling patch for 2.4.0

Nigel Gamble
2001-01-22T02:21:42Z

On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> >Let me just point out that Victor has his own commercial axe to grind in
> >his continual bad-mouthing of IRIX, the internals of which he knows
> >nothing about.
>
> 1) do you actually disagree with victor ?

Yes, I most emphatically do disagree with Victor! IRIX is used for
mission-critical audio applications - recording as well playback - and
other low-latency applications. The same OS scales to large numbers of
CPUs. And it has the best desktop interactive response of any OS I've
used. I will be very happy when Linux is as good in all these areas,
and I'm working hard to achieve this goal with negligible impact on the
current Linux "sweet-spot" applications such as web serving.

> this discussion has the hallmarks of turning into a personal
> bash-fest, which is really pointless. what is *not* pointless is a
> considered discussion about the merits of the IRIX "RT" approach over
> possible approaches that Linux might take which are dissimilar to the
> IRIX one. on the other hand, as Victor said, a large part of that
> discussion ultimately comes down to a design style rather than hard
> factual or logical reasoning.

I agree. I'm not wedded to any particular design - I just want a
low-latency Linux by whatever is the best way of achieving that.
However, I am hearing Victor say that we shouldn't try to make Linux
itself low-latency, we should just use his so-called "RTLinux" environment
for low-latency tasks. RTLinux is not Linux, it is a separate
environment with a separate, limited set of APIs. You can't run XMMS,
or any other existing Linux audio app in RTLinux. I want a low-latency
Linux, not just another RTOS living parasitically alongside Linux.

Nigel Gamble nigel@nrg.org
Mountain View, CA, USA. http://www.nrg.org/