From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262906AbUGICAT (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jul 2004 22:00:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262382AbUGICAS (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jul 2004 22:00:18 -0400 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:34463 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262906AbUGIB7C (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jul 2004 21:59:02 -0400 Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 18:57:26 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Nick Piggin Cc: pwil3058@bigpond.net.au, Alexander.Povolotsky@marconi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, efault@gmx.de, rml@tech9.net, mingo@elte.hu, kernel@kolivas.org, elladan@eskimo.com, cks@utcc.utoronto.ca Subject: Re: Maximum frequency of re-scheduling (minimum time quantum ) que stio n Message-Id: <20040708185726.1c375176.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <40EDF8F5.2060808@yahoo.com.au> References: <313680C9A886D511A06000204840E1CF08F42FE6@whq-msgusr-02.pit.comms.marconi.com> <40EDD980.4040608@bigpond.net.au> <40EDF8F5.2060808@yahoo.com.au> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Nick Piggin wrote: > > However well tested your scheduler might be, it needs several > orders of magnitude more testing ;) Maybe the best we can hope > for is compile time selectable alternatives. At this stage in the kernel lifecycle, for something as fiddly as the CPU scheduler we really should be 100% driven by problem reporting. If someone can identify a particular misbehaviour in the CPU scheduler then they should put their editor away and work to produce a solid testcase. Armed with that, we can then identify the source of the particular problem. It is at this point, and no earlier, that we can decide what an appropriate solution is. We then balance the risk of that solution against the severity of the problem which it solves and make a decision as to whether to proceed. Right now, the ratio of quality bug reporting to scheduler patching is bizarrely small.