On Mon, 2009-12-07 at 05:36 -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > something i'm reading claims that softirqs are used directly (that > is, not simply to support tasklets) in only the networking and block > devices subsystems. anyone know offhand any other places they're > used? i can run a grep shortly but if you happen to know ...
I am not an expert in this, but from my understanding (and from http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.31/include/linux/interrupt.h) softIRQ's are also implemented by the scheduler (SCHED_SOFTIRQ) to implement periodic load balancing on SMP and also in the case of kernel timers and high-resolution timers (HRTIMER_SOFTIRQ). It is much simpler to implement a tasklet compared to softirq. I think, a softirq is preferred over tasklets only when you have some high-frequency data or/and time critical data that needs to be handled. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to [email protected] Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
