RE: Why use threads ( was: Alan Cox quote?)

Marco Colombo
2001-06-21T19:55:32Z

On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, Davide Libenzi wrote:

>
> On 21-Jun-2001 David Schwartz wrote:
> > Okay, let's compare two servers.
> >
> > Server one is handling 10 file descriptors. The cost of a single call to
> > poll is 3 microseconds. Assume that the server is coded to get back to
> > 'poll' as quickly as it can, but due to load the code manages to call 'poll'
> > every 100 microseconds, so the overhead of poll is 3% of the available CPU.
>
> Maybe You read a paper by Richard Gooch but I think You read it wrong :
>
> http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/io-events.html
>
> <quote>
> The kernel has to scan your array of FDs and check which ones are active. This
> takes approximately 3 microseconds (3 us) per FD on a Pentium 100 running Linux
> 2.1.x. Now you might think that 3 us is quite fast, but consider if you have an
> array of 1000 FDs. This is now 3 milliseconds (3 ms), which is 30% of your
> timeslice (each timeslice is 10 ms). If it happens that there is initially no
> activity and you specified a timeout, the kernel will have to perform a second
> scan after some activity occurs or the syscall times out. Ouch! If you have an
> even bigger application (like a large http server), you can easily have 10000
> FDs. Scanning times will then take 30 ms, which is three timeslices! This is
> just way too much.
> </quote>

Why would you want to call poll() on *every* timeslice? What's wrong
with (assuming 10ms slice):

t0 (10ms): poll(3ms) - some work
t1 (10ms): more work
t2 (10ms): more work
...
t9 (10ms): almost done
t10(10ms): done - poll(3ms) - some other work

that still accounts for 3% overhead. IIRC, David was proposing about
1000 fds/thread so the numbers fit. Also, keeping *two* pools, one
with 100 fds (which covers 90% of the activity) and the other with
900 fds, you can even lower that (overall) 3%, since you call poll()
on the 100 array more often than you do on the 900 array.
[ BTW, David, do you implement this with two threads or schedule the
two pool()'s into the same one? - I'm just curious B-) ]

David's argument of course fails if there's no work to be done on
all the events (= active fds). But why should one code such an application?
... oh, wait, that reminds me something... (something about scheduler
overhead on large runqueues, .. no no I won't go to that place again!)
[but since sooner or later I'll move my desktop system to a 128 SMP one,
please go on patching the scheduler, Davide] B-)

> Anyway there's no need to continue this ( quite long ) thread.

Well, I was reading it with pleasure... B-)

>
>
>
>
> - Davide
>
> -
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.TM.
--
____/ ____/ /
/ / / Marco Colombo
___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
/ / / ESI s.r.l.
_____/ _____/ _/ Colombo@ESI.it