On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Mark Perry <[email protected]> wrote:

>> Why would idle virtual processors be in the dispatch list?
>>
>
> Spin locks ;-)

I can see your smiley, so I take it you don't really think that an
idle processor would cause lock contention looking for work (though
this situation is not uncommon in an office environment...).

My main concern for spreading ones small amount of work over multiple
virtual CPUs is z/VM memory management. It is already hard enough on a
virtual one-way to have long enough periods of silence that the
virtual machine can drop from queue. When you spread it over multiple
virtual CPUs, times are very rare that CP will find all CPUs idle long
enough at the same time. So even when individual virtual CPUs drop
from queue, CP does not find a chance to do memory management.

Rob
--
Rob van der Heij
Velocity Software
http://www.velocitysoftware.com/

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