Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261371AbVE2RwZ (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 May 2005 13:52:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261369AbVE2RwZ (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 May 2005 13:52:25 -0400 Received: from h80ad2702.async.vt.edu ([128.173.39.2]:46097 "EHLO h80ad2702.async.vt.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261367AbVE2RwM (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 May 2005 13:52:12 -0400 Message-Id: <200505291750.j4THoUWW010374@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.7.2 01/07/2005 with nmh-1.1-RC3 To: Zwane Mwaikambo Cc: Lee Revell , Bill Huey , Nick Piggin , Andi Kleen , Sven-Thorsten Dietrich , Ingo Molnar , dwalker@mvista.com, hch@infradead.org, akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: RT patch acceptance In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 29 May 2005 09:00:49 MDT." From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu References: <1117044019.5840.32.camel@sdietrich-xp.vilm.net> <20050526193230.GY86087@muc.de> <1117138270.1583.44.camel@sdietrich-xp.vilm.net> <20050526202747.GB86087@muc.de> <4296ADE9.50805@yahoo.com.au> <20050527120812.GA375@nietzsche.lynx.com> <429715DE.6030008@yahoo.com.au> <20050527233645.GA2283@nietzsche.lynx.com> <4297EB57.5090902@yahoo.com.au> <20050528054503.GA2958@nietzsche.lynx.com> <1117334933.11397.21.camel@mindpipe> <200505290408.j4T487n6024489@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="==_Exmh_1117389028_6734P"; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 13:50:29 -0400 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3161 Lines: 64 --==_Exmh_1117389028_6734P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Sun, 29 May 2005 09:00:49 MDT, Zwane Mwaikambo said: > On Sun, 29 May 2005 Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote: > > I'd be wildly surprised if media apps *were* commonplace on an operating > > system that didn't supply the needed scheduling infrastructure. > > > > That's as straw-man as commenting that applications that used more than 16 > > processors weren't commonplace on Linux before the scalability work that made > > it feasible to build systems with more than 2 CPUs.... > > I'm not talking about Linux (which should be obvious as Linux isn't an > RTOS), so it has nothing to do with Linux capabilities. I'm referring to > general hard realtime applications and their use of realtime operating > systems. As amply shown by the Ardour and linux-audio crowds, the *MAJOR* thing keeping realtime apps from spreading further is the lack of usable RT support in CTOS operating systems. Yes, you *can* do realtime audio - if you're willing to not use a common operating system and run some specialized RTOS instead. This is frequently a show-stopper for small-time use - if there's an additional $5K cost to getting and installing an RTOS (quite likely you need a new computer, or redo the one you have to dual-boot), it may not be a problem for a large recording studio - but it *is* a problem for a small studio or a home user. So you end up with "The 150 places that buy 48-channel mixers are using RT, but the 40,000 people who buy 4/8 channel mixers aren't" - by your standards, nobody's interested in 48-channel mixing boards either. So tell me - who was using SMP with large numbers of processors *before* the Linux kernel? Hmm.. You could buy an SGI Onyx. A Sun E10K. The IBM gear. And for some odd reason, there wasn't many sites that just weren't doing SMP - it wasn't that long ago that a 48-CPU Sun was enough to get you on the Top500 supercomputer list. Now everybody and their pet llama has a 128-node system, it seems.... Large-scale SMP, realtime, whatever. It doesn't matter - you're pointing at it and saying "But nobody *uses* it" when nobody can afford the technology, when there's plenty of people lining up and saying "We *would* be using it if it were accessible". Nobody drives around in Rolls Royces and Bentleys either - and 20 years ago, you could have used that to say "But nobody drives luxury cars". That's changed considerably - you get a company that decides to make a Lexus, with 95% of the quality at 10% of the price, and you can see a *lot* of them on the road..... --==_Exmh_1117389028_6734P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 iD8DBQFCmgDkcC3lWbTT17ARAvWDAKCvkaWky+HxuoAtA4xMLp2U0VSMQgCgtVQ0 HH+veMUtVy02vJCPbuWBHu8= =KFGU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_1117389028_6734P-- - 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/