Message-ID: <452F7303.6070303@superbug.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:05:39 +0100
From: James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>
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To: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>
CC: John Richard Moser <nigelenki@comcast.net>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Can context switches be faster?
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Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 14:25 -0400, John Richard Moser wrote:
> 
> 
>>   - 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. 
> 

So, that is needed for a full process context switch to another process.
 Is the context switch between threads quicker as it should not need to
flush the TLB?

James

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