Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 14:18:51 -0700 From: Geoff Fritz <gfritz@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Scheduling behavior when using idprio Message-ID: <20090203211851.GA92202@dev.null>
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I recently noticed something odd. Whenever I have a cpu-bound process (say, piping a lot of data through "gzip -9c") that's been given an idle priority using "idprio 31 -<PID>", I notice that my system's overall interactive responsiveness feels peppier. Apps seems to respond faster, screens redraw faster, web pages render quicker, etc.. It's reminiscent of enabling the interactive real-time options in the Linux kernel (at least, as I remember it years ago from the 2.4 days). My system is a little long in the tooth (2GHz Athlon64, single core), so any speed improvements are quickly noticed around here. I was wondering if there was an explanation for my observations, or if anyone else has seen -- or could repeat -- this. If this is a repeatable/known behavior, would this be a scheduler bug? Why would things run more smoothly only when there was a single ulta-low priority process running? Thanks. -- Geoff
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