Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759065AbXH1Qet (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:34:49 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755830AbXH1Qem (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:34:42 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:36821 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755236AbXH1Qel (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:34:41 -0400 Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 09:34:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Al Boldi cc: Ingo Molnar , Peter Zijlstra , Mike Galbraith , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: CFS review In-Reply-To: <200708280823.53663.a1426z@gawab.com> Message-ID: References: <200708111344.42934.a1426z@gawab.com> <200708280737.53439.a1426z@gawab.com> <200708280823.53663.a1426z@gawab.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1161 Lines: 29 On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Al Boldi wrote: > > I like your analysis, but how do you explain that these stalls vanish when > __update_curr is disabled? It's entirely possible that what happens is that the X scheduling is just a slightly unstable system - which effectively would turn a small scheduling difference into a *huge* visible difference. And the "small scheduling difference" might be as simple as "if the process slept for a while, we give it a bit more CPU time". And then you get into some unbalanced setup where the X scheduler makes it sleep even more, because it fills its buffers. Or something. I can easily see two schedulers that are trying to *individually* be "fair", fighting it out in a way where the end result is not very good. I do suspect it's probably a very interesting load, so I hope Ingo looks more at it, but I also suspect it's more than just the kernel scheduler. Linus - 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/