Re: Can context switches be faster?

Arjan van de Ven
2006-10-12T18:37:15Z

On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 14:25 -0400, John Richard Moser wrote:

Hi,

> So apparently most CPUs virtually address L1 cache and physically
> address L2; but sometimes physically addressing L1 is better.. hur.

if you are interested in this I would strongly urge you to read Curt
Schimmel's book (UNIX(R) Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric
Multiprocessing and Caching for Kernel Programmers); it explains this
and related materials really really well.

> - Does the current code act on these behaviors, or just flush all
> cache regardless?

the cache flushing is a per architecture property. On x86, the cache
flushing isn't needed; but a TLB flush is. Depending on your hardware
that can be expensive as well.

Greetings,
Arjan van de Ven