Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 24 Feb 2003 02:42:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 24 Feb 2003 02:42:31 -0500 Received: from holomorphy.com ([66.224.33.161]:37807 "EHLO holomorphy") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 24 Feb 2003 02:42:29 -0500 Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 23:51:42 -0800 From: William Lee Irwin III To: Larry McVoy , "Martin J. Bligh" , Larry McVoy , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call Message-ID: <20030224075142.GA10396@holomorphy.com> Mail-Followup-To: William Lee Irwin III , Larry McVoy , "Martin J. Bligh" , Larry McVoy , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <1510000.1045942974@[10.10.2.4]> <20030222195642.GI1407@work.bitmover.com> <2080000.1045947731@[10.10.2.4]> <20030222231552.GA31268@work.bitmover.com> <3610000.1045957443@[10.10.2.4]> <20030224045616.GB4215@work.bitmover.com> <48940000.1046063797@[10.10.2.4]> <20030224065826.GA5665@work.bitmover.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030224065826.GA5665@work.bitmover.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.25i Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2145 Lines: 41 On Sun, Feb 23, 2003 at 10:58:26PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote: > Linux is a really fast system right now. The code paths are short and > it is possible to use the OS almost as if it were a library, the cost is > so little that you really can mmap stuff in as you need, something that > people have wanted since Multics. There will always be many more uses > of Linux in small systems than large, simply because there will always > be more small systems. Keeping Linux working well on small systems is > going to have a dramatically larger positive benefit for the world than > scaling it to 64 processors. So who do you want to help? An elite > few or everyone? I don't know what kind of joke you think I'm trying to play here. "Scalability" is about making the kernel properly adapt to the size of the system. This means UP. This means embedded. This means mid-range x86 bigfathighmem turds. This means SGI Altix. I have _personally_ written patches to decrease the space footprint of pidhashes and other data structures so that embedded systems function more optimally. It's not about crapping all over the low end. It's not about degrading performance on commonly available systems. It's about increasing the range of systems on which Linux performs well and is useful. Maintaining the performance of Linux on commonly available systems is not only deeply ingrained as one of a set of personal standards amongst all kernel hackers involved with scalability, it's also a prerequisite for patch acceptance that is rigorously enforced by maintainers. To further demonstrate this, look at the pgd_ctor patches, which markedly reduced the overhead of pgd setup and teardown on UP lowmem systems and were very minor improvements on PAE systems. Now it's time to turn the question back around on you. Why do you not want Linux to work well on a broader range of systems than it does now? -- wli - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/