[luau] News - Linux Kernel Scalability research at Red Hat

[Warren Togami]

This article mentions two innovations from Red Hat kernel developers. 
Ingo Molnar's O(1) scheduler and Arjan van de Ven's upcoming O(1) VM 
layer.  I hadn't heard of the O(1) VM layer previously but this is great 
news, especially if you remember the VM troubles in the early 2.4.x 
kernel.  These kernel improvements mean great improvements in the 
scalability of the Linux kernel.

The second article describes the Native Posix Threading Library 
sponsored by Red Hat.  NPTL is a combination of improvements to both 
glibc and the kernel that will mean much greater threading scalability 
on the Linux kernel while being binary compatible with existing programs.


http://kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=517

"Ingo Molnar has been contributing to Linux kernel development since 
1995 with an impressive list of accomplishments. Most recently his O(1) 
scheduler was merged into the 2.5 development kernel, as well as much 
work to enhance the handling of threads. Other highly visible 
contributions include software-RAID support and the in-kernel Tux web 
and FTP servers.

"In this interview, Ingo explores how he started working on the Linux 
kernel, noting, "It might sound a bit strange but i installed my first 
Linux box for the sole purpose of looking at the kernel source." He goes 
on to explain the concepts behind his new O(1) scheduler, and to 
describe many of his other kernel efforts. This interview was conducted 
over several months, and covers a wide range interesting topics...
(continued in article)


http://kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=422

"One test mentioned in Ulrich's email - running 100,000 concurrent 
threads on an IA-32 - generated some interesting discussion. Ingo Molnar 
explained that with the current stock 2.5 kernel such a test requires 
roughly 1GB RAM, and the act of starting and stopping all 100,000 
threads in parallel takes only 2 seconds. In comparison, with the 2.5.31 
kernel (prior to Ingo's recent threading work), such a test would have 
taken around 15 minutes.
(continued in article)


https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/phil-list/2002-November/000275.html
Someone from Intel wrote a HOWTO use NPTL on Red Hat