From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758869AbXJCS3T (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:29:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751614AbXJCS3L (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:29:11 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:60468 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751101AbXJCS3K (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:29:10 -0400 Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 11:28:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Arjan van de Ven cc: Chuck Ebbert , Andrew Morton , Anders Bostr?m , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: PROBLEM: high load average when idle In-Reply-To: <4703DD8A.80602@linux.intel.com> Message-ID: References: <20071002.233731.119908363.anders@bostrom.dyndns.org> <20071002150748.906970bc.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <4702C756.8090108@redhat.com> <20071002162613.54c3ef43@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <4703D212.6040304@redhat.com> <4703DD8A.80602@linux.intel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > > not sure this is going to help; I mean, the load gets only updated in actual > timer interrupts... and on a tickless system there's very few of those > around..... and usually at places round_jiffies() already put a timer on. Yeah, you're right. Although in practice, at least on a system running X, I'd expect that there still is lots of other timers going on, hiding the issue. Hmm. Maybe Anders' problem stems partly from the fact that he really is using the tweaks to make that tickless theory more true than it tends to be on most systems? Linus