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Preemptible Kernel Patch Accepted

Posted by michael on from the a-little-Love-for-everyone dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The preemptible Linux kernel patch that was originally introduced by MontaVista Software and more recently championed by Robert Love has been merged by Linus Torvalds into the main linux development-kernel tree, beginning version v2.5.4-pre6. This adds a far greater degree of real-time responsiveness to the standard Linux kernel, by reducing interrupt latencies while kernel functions are executing. The story at LinuxDevices.com includes comments by Robert Love, and there is also a recent interview with Robert Love about the preemptable kernel here and a whitepaper about the technology by MontaVista here."

3 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. If I had mod points by sinserve · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I would mod you down :'D

    The kernel is GPLed, so anything that makes into
    it is free as in speech.

  2. Re:Disadvantages by Tremul · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I love it when people get mod'd up as informative when they just reposted parts of the article. I guess they're helping the people who are unable to click on the link. Perhaps we should invent a new mod type. Idiot

    --

    "Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
  3. QNX has far lower latency by Animats · · Score: 2, Offtopic
    The right way to do this is in QNX, which only prevents interrupts for a few instructions at a time, typically while updating queues. QNX has a real microkernel; all the kernel does is schedule the CPU and handle interprocess communication. Everything else (drivers, paging, file systems, networking, graphics, etc.) is in protected-mode user processes, all of which are preemptable. This allows QNX to deliver sub-microsecond latency to high-priority processes.

    QNX stands as a rebuke to those who say a microkernel OS has to be slow.