[ Thanks to Jeremy
Andrews for this link. ]
“Con Kolivas posted a lengthy and very interesting summary of
his attempts to increase interactivity in the upcoming 2.6 Linux
kernel. He begins with a little background on his efforts:“‘A long discussion for sometime has centred on just what
interactivity is. I did not set out to define interactivity and
then modify the scheduler policy to match that definition. Instead
what I have concentrated on is improving the overall feel of using
2.6 on a desktop (gui or non). The area I concentrated on was that
of tasks that it would make a noticable difference when there was
sufficient delay or jitter between the time they wake up and the
time they are scheduled. This makes a palpable difference in the
form of audio skips in playback or jerky mouse movement. The effect
of increasing loads on the system and maintaining fairness must
also be addressed when tackling these.’“Con goes on to examine how Ingo Molnar’s O(1) scheduler handles
interactivity, the problems it introduces, and a thorough
explanation of what’s been done so far to try and make the desktop
feel better…”