Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 24 May 2000 22:54:19 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
To:        Chuck Paterson <cp@bsdi.com>
Cc:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Preemptive kernel on older X86 hardware 
Message-ID:  <200005250554.WAA79002@apollo.backplane.com>
References:   <200005250401.WAA17540@berserker.bsdi.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

:
:
:}    Function call overhead is around 17 nS (On a PIII 450) in
:}    the cache case.
:}
:}    A locked instruction of any sort, non-contending, eats
:}    73 nS.
:
:This means that you use 17ns and on a UP machine with and non locked
:cmpxchg the time is going to propably more than double. I
:still content that this is the single most important thing
:to make fast in the uncontended case and everybit counts.
:
:Actually this can be decided by experimentation when the
:thing is running. It's not like a fundamental design decision.

    No, such small numbers aren't that important.  Do you want me
    to tell you what the cost of an L2 cache miss is with a *normal* 
    memory read?  You might be surprised how bad it is.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@backplane.com>


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200005250554.WAA79002>