developerWorks: Improving Linux Kernel Performance and Scalability

“The Linux operating system is one of the most successful open
source projects to date. Linux exhibits high reliability as a Web
server operating system, and it has significant market share in
this market. Web servers are typically low-end to midrange systems
with up to 4-way symmetric multiple processors (SMP);
enterprise-level systems have more complex requirements, such as
larger processor counts and I/O configurations and significant
memory and bandwidth requirements. In order for Linux to be
enterprise-ready and commercially viable in the SMP market, its SMP
scalability, disk and network I/O performance, scheduler, and
virtual memory manager must be improved relative to commercial UNIX
systems.

“The Linux Scalability Effort (LSE) is an open source project
that addresses these Linux kernel issues for enterprise class
machines, with 8-way scalability and beyond.

“The IBM Linux Technology Center’s (LTC) Linux Performance Team
actively participates in the LSE effort. In addition, their
objective is to make Linux better by improving Linux kernel
performance with special emphasis on SMP scalability…”

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