• Ingo Molnar's avatar
    [PATCH] sched: voluntary kernel preemption · f8cbd99b
    Ingo Molnar authored
    
    This patch adds a new preemption model: 'Voluntary Kernel Preemption'.  The
    3 models can be selected from a new menu:
    
                (X) No Forced Preemption (Server)
                ( ) Voluntary Kernel Preemption (Desktop)
                ( ) Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)
    
    we still default to the stock (Server) preemption model.
    
    Voluntary preemption works by adding a cond_resched()
    (reschedule-if-needed) call to every might_sleep() check.  It is lighter
    than CONFIG_PREEMPT - at the cost of not having as tight latencies.  It
    represents a different latency/complexity/overhead tradeoff.
    
    It has no runtime impact at all if disabled.  Here are size stats that show
    how the various preemption models impact the kernel's size:
    
        text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
     3618774  547184  179896 4345854  424ffe vmlinux.stock
     3626406  547184  179896 4353486  426dce vmlinux.voluntary   +0.2%
     3748414  548640  179896 4476950  445016 vmlinux.preempt     +3.5%
    
    voluntary-preempt is +0.2% of .text, preempt is +3.5%.
    
    This feature has been tested for many months by lots of people (and it's
    also included in the RHEL4 distribution and earlier variants were in Fedora
    as well), and it's intended for users and distributions who dont want to
    use full-blown CONFIG_PREEMPT for one reason or another.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
    f8cbd99b
Kconfig.preempt 2.27 KB

choice
	prompt "Preemption Model"
	default PREEMPT_NONE

config PREEMPT_NONE
	bool "No Forced Preemption (Server)"
	help
	  This is the traditional Linux preemption model, geared towards
	  throughput. It will still provide good latencies most of the
	  time, but there are no guarantees and occasional longer delays
	  are possible.

	  Select this option if you are building a kernel for a server or
	  scientific/computation system, or if you want to maximize the
	  raw processing power of the kernel, irrespective of scheduling
	  latencies.

config PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY
	bool "Voluntary Kernel Preemption (Desktop)"
	help
	  This option reduces the latency of the kernel by adding more
	  "explicit preemption points" to the kernel code. These new
	  preemption points have been selected to reduce the maximum
	  latency of rescheduling, providing faster application reactions,
	  at the cost of slighly lower throughput.

	  This allows reaction to interactive events by allowing a
	  low priority process to voluntarily preempt itself even if it
	  is in kernel mode executing a system call. This allows
	  applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the system is
	  under load.

	  Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop system.

config PREEMPT
	bool "Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)"
	help
	  This option reduces the latency of the kernel by making
	  all kernel code (that is not executing in a critical section)
	  preemptible.  This allows reaction to interactive events by
	  permitting a low priority process to be preempted involuntarily
	  even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call and would
	  otherwise not be about to reach a natural preemption point.
	  This allows applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the
	  system is under load, at the cost of slighly lower throughput
	  and a slight runtime overhead to kernel code.

	  Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop or
	  embedded system with latency requirements in the milliseconds
	  range.

endchoice

config PREEMPT_BKL
	bool "Preempt The Big Kernel Lock"
	depends on SMP || PREEMPT
	default y
	help
	  This option reduces the latency of the kernel by making the
	  big kernel lock preemptible.

	  Say Y here if you are building a kernel for a desktop system.
	  Say N if you are unsure.