From owner-freebsd-arch Fri May 19 12:22:54 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mass.cdrom.com (adsl-63-206-88-224.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.206.88.224]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73F6F37BF92 for ; Fri, 19 May 2000 12:22:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from msmith@mass.cdrom.com) Received: from mass.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mass.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA09426; Fri, 19 May 2000 12:23:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from msmith@mass.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <200005191923.MAA09426@mass.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.1.1 10/15/1999 To: Chuck Paterson Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: BSD* mutex summary In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 19 May 2000 13:12:38 MDT." <200005191912.NAA11320@berserker.bsdi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 12:23:53 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Thanks for the summary here; this helps put things in context in combination with Sun's publications on the topic. One item: > We have been using the term priority propagation. When a process > blocks on a mutex the running priority is propagated to the > holder of the mutex, if the holder is at a lower priority. As > far as I can tell it is identical to the Solaris term priority > inheritance. When I left Sun this had yet to be implemented but > the need for it was certainly understood. As Terry made it clear, this is "priority lending" in the common lexicon. Given the recent exercise over the proposed kernel thread architecture, where after much discussion and the invention of a great deal of new terminology we basically reinvented scheduler activations (described in a 10 year old paper), I think that cleaving to existing terminology is probably a good idea. After all, none of this is rocket science, and I don't think we need to kid ourselves that this hasn't already been done before. Where there's material elsewhere that we can benefit from, whether it's just terminology or whether it's code complete, it's worth taking advantage of someone else's sweat and tears. 8) -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message