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Message-ID: <46851635.2070201@garzik.org>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:24:53 -0400
From: Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
To: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
CC: Alexey Kuznetsov <kuznet@....inr.ac.ru>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
john stultz <johnstul@...ibm.com>,
Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...sign.ru>,
"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
Dipankar Sarma <dipankar@...ibm.com>,
"David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, matthew.wilcox@...com
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/6] Convert all tasklets to workqueues
Steven Rostedt wrote:
> I had very little hope for this magic switch to get into mainline. (maybe
> get it into -mm) But the thing was is that tasklets IMHO are over used.
> As Ingo said, there are probably only 2 or 3 places in the kernel that a
> a switch to work queue conversion couldn't solve.
This is purely a guess, backed by zero evidence.
These network drivers were hand-tuned to use tasklets. Sure it will
WORK as a workqueue, but that says nothing equivalence.
> Those places could then
> probably be solved by a different design (yes that would take work).
Network driver patches welcome :)
> Tasklets are there because there
> wasn't work queues or kthreads at the time of solving the solution that
> tasklets solved.
Completely false, at least in network driver land. Threads existed and
were used (proof: 8139too, among others).
Kernel threads were not used for hot path network packet shovelling
because they were too damn slow. Tasklets were single-threaded, fast,
simple and immediate. Workqueues today are simple and almost-fast.
Jeff
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