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
