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Removing the Big Kernel Lock

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wait-i-thought-locks-made-it-secure dept.

Corrado writes "There is a big discussion going on over removing a bit of non-preemptable code from the Linux kernel. 'As some of the latency junkies on lkml already know, commit 8e3e076 in v2.6.26-rc2 removed the preemptable BKL feature and made the Big Kernel Lock a spinlock and thus turned it into non-preemptable code again. "This commit returned the BKL code to the 2.6.7 state of affairs in essence," began Ingo Molnar. He noted that this had a very negative effect on the real time kernel efforts, adding that Linux creator Linus Torvalds indicated the only acceptable way forward was to completely remove the BKL.'"

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Translation? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 0, Troll

    Windows NT was around before 1992 and it doesn't have a big kernel lock - individual resources are protected with spinlocks.

    But that's because it was designed from the ground up to be SMP friendly, as opposed to being a clone of a 1970's operating system.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;