Re: processor affinity

Jon Masters
2004-09-28T13:49:05Z

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:25:17 +0100 (BST), Ankit Jain
<ankitjain1580@yahoo.com> wrote:

> what is meant by processor affinity?

Affinity means that a process has an affinity for a particular subset
of the available CPUs within a particular system - it wishes to run
only on these processors. Linux supports hard processor affinity and
process migration to enforce such demands which get be made using the
POSIX sched_[set|get]param calls.

Robert Love has written an excellent book entitled Linux Kernel
Development, it's not expensive and very worthwhile. Chapter 3 is
entitled Scheduling and it explains process affinity as well as
process migration and the concept of migration threads as used within
the Linux kernel to enforce policy in the implmentation.

I suggest also that you consider joining the Kernel Newbies mailing
list, newly revived and now with working signup page over at
http://www.kernelnewbies.org/

Jon.