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Con Kolivas Returns, With a Desktop-Oriented Linux Scheduler
myvirtualid writes "Con Kolivas has done what he swore never to do: returned to the Linux kernel and written a new — and, according to him — waaay better scheduler for the desktop environment. In fact, BFS appears to outperform existing schedulers right up until one hits a 16-CPU machine, at which point he guesses performance would degrade somewhat. According to Kolivas, BFS 'was designed to be forward looking only, make the most of lower spec machines, and not scale to massive hardware. i.e. [sic] it is a desktop orientated scheduler, with extremely low latencies for excellent interactivity by design rather than 'calculated,' with rigid fairness, nice priority distribution and extreme scalability within normal load levels.'"
I smell another LKML flamewar coming....
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Great, now when someone mentions BFS I won't be able to just assume Breadth First Search.
Another one for the Geeks-are-great-at-naming-things wall.
While I think it's great for Linux to have more choice in schedulers, I don't understand Con's spec at all:
Hang on there, something's not right with that logic:
1) If you're forward looking, how can you not scale beyond 16 cores? We're already at 8 cores on home boxes.
2) And if you're forward looking only, then how come that you're looking backwards at lower spec machines?
Whoever wrote that piece just produced a sound bite that's logically meaningless.
You looked at goatse and you liked it.
You know, I think I can see his brain right up at the end.
Haven't run Linux as my personal OS since 2003 but I had a lot of time (pun intended) for CK's schedulers. Now a whole new generation of youngsters can finally learn what a _REAL_ LKML flamewar looks like ;-)
Musical Schedulers? Let me guess, when the music starts to skip, a random process gets killed.
The sic is forward looking...
- Peder