Phoronix: The Impact Of A Tickless Kernel

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for this link. ]

"This will be short and sweet. In this article we will be looking at the impact of CONFIG_NO_HZ/Dynamic Ticks, which will be found in the Linux 2.6.21 kernel. The option has been available as a patch for quite a while, but not until Linux 2.6.21-rc1 had it been merged into the upstream kernel. When enabled, there will only be timer ticks when they are needed. The end-user benefit is cooler-running processors and increased power savings. We have investigated this change with a notebook and desktop computer..."

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• KernelTrap: 2.6.21-rc1, Dynticks Merged(Feb 22, 2007)
• KernelTrap: Improving KVM Performance With A Tickless Kernel(Jan 16, 2007)
• KernelTrap: High-Res Timers and Tickless Kernel(Jun 24, 2006)