Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:53:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:53:24 -0400 Received: from [208.171.173.186] ([208.171.173.186]:24333 "EHLO challenge.atlanticweb.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:53:04 -0400 From: "Chris Swiedler" To: "Jim Gettys" Cc: "Linux-Kernel" Subject: RE: Linux's implementation of poll() not scalable? Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:56:31 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <200010261951.MAA18919@pachyderm.pa.dec.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Importance: Normal Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > It doesn't practically matter how efficient the X server is when > you aren't busy, after all. A simple polling scheme (i.e. not using poll() or select(), just looping through all fd's trying nonblocking reads) is perfectly efficient when the server is 100% busy, and perfectly inefficient when there is nothing to do. I'm not saying that your statements are wrong--in your example, X is calling select() which is not wasting as much time as a hard-polling loop--but it's wrong to say that high-load efficiency is the primary concern. I would be horrified if X took a signifigant portion of the CPU time when many clients were connected, but none were actually doing anything. chris - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/