Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1765538AbXF2OZf (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:25:35 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755987AbXF2OZ0 (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:25:26 -0400 Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:57696 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752313AbXF2OZZ (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:25:25 -0400 Message-ID: <46851635.2070201@garzik.org> Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:24:53 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (X11/20070530) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Steven Rostedt CC: Alexey Kuznetsov , Ingo Molnar , Linus Torvalds , LKML , Andrew Morton , Thomas Gleixner , Christoph Hellwig , john stultz , Oleg Nesterov , "Paul E. McKenney" , Dipankar Sarma , "David S. Miller" , matthew.wilcox@hp.com Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/6] Convert all tasklets to workqueues References: <20070622040014.234651401@goodmis.org> <20070622204058.GA11777@elte.hu> <20070622215953.GA22917@elte.hu> <46834BB8.1020007@garzik.org> <20070628092340.GB23566@elte.hu> <20070628143850.GA11780@ms2.inr.ac.ru> <20070628160001.GA15495@elte.hu> <20070629113423.GA9042@ms2.inr.ac.ru> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -4.3 (----) X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin version 3.1.9 on srv5.dvmed.net summary: Content analysis details: (-4.3 points, 5.0 required) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1320 Lines: 37 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 - 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/