Re: [2.4.17/18pre] VM and swap - it's really unusable

Bill Davidsen
2002-01-14T01:29:00Z

On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Kent Borg wrote:

> How does all this fit into doing a tick-less kernel?
>
> There is something appealing about doing stuff only when there is
> stuff to do, like: respond to input, handle some device that becomes
> ready, or let another process run for a while. Didn't IBM do some
> nice work on this for Linux? (*Was* it nice work?) I was under the
> impression that the current kernel isn't that far from being tickless.
>
> A tickless kernel would be wonderful for battery powered devices that
> could literally shut off when there be nothing to do, and it seems it
> would (trivially?) help performance on high end power hogs too.
>
> Why do we have regular HZ ticks? (Other than I think I remember Linus
> saying that he likes them.)

Feel free to quantify the savings over the current setup with max power
saving enabled in the kernel. I just don't see how "wonderful" it would
be, given that an idle system currently uses very little battery if you
setup the options to save power.

--
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.