Re: [patch] "HT scheduler", sched-2.5.63-B3

Robert Love (rml@tech9.net)
06 Mar 2003 18:05:23 -0500


On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 17:31, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:

> Right, being able to control this interactivity knob programmatically
> seems like a useful thing. That way, the window manager can boost the
> interactivity of the foreground window for example. It does seem that
> figuring out that something is interactive in the scheduler is tough,
> there is just not enough information, whereas a higher layer may know
> this for a fact. I guess this reduces my argument to just keeping the
> interactivity setting separate from priority.

No no no. Martin's point shows exactly that nothing but the kernel can
ever know whether a task is I/O or CPU bound. What is bash? Is it
interactive (when you are typing into it) or CPU bound (when its running
a script or doing other junk)?

Only the kernel knows exactly the sleep patterns of tasks, which is
essentially whether or not a task is interactive.

Finally, the windows manager idea is bad. The foreground window may
have dependencies elsewhere, and giving it a boost only partially solves
the problem.

I think with Linus's patch, the problem is solved, because we boost both
I/O-bound tasks and tasks that help I/O bound tasks.

Robert Love

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