>Anyone got a URL or otherwise for what the difference is between >pre-empt and low-latency patches? I know they are good, but should >I apply both, one or the other, or is there some other worthy patches. >Laymans explanation for what is pre-empt or low-latency??
Great article on this that i was reading the other day : http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8906594941.html Basically, these patches try to decrease the time that applications have to wait to respond to IO. This is important for things such as sound/video processing, where you have large amounts of data coming in that must be moved/processes lest you loose it. What normally happens is your application requests some data from an IO device, and the kernel says "OK, I'll get that for you, go to sleep so i can do something else and I'll wake you up when I'm done". The kernel requests the data from the IO device, and goes on doing something else. When the device is finished, it sets an interrupt to signal that it's done and the data is ready. In normal linux, the time between your application being woken back up and given this data is extremely variable, and not suitable for things like serious audio work. In a real time OS, the time between the interrupt and your application getting woken up would be constant. With these patches, it makes it somewhere inbetween. The consequence for normal users is that people report the system feels "snappier" to use as it responds to their requests faster, so you might find it good. -i [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wienand.org ********************************************************************** CAUTION: This message may contain confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, any use or disclosure of this message is prohibited. If you received this message in error please notify Mail Administrators immediately. You must obtain all necessary intellectual property clearances before doing anything other than displaying this message on your monitor. There is no intellectual property licence. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Woolworths Ltd. ********************************************************************** -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
