From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jul 12 22:23:15 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A1442106567F for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:23:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from neldredge@math.ucsd.edu) Received: from euclid.ucsd.edu (euclid.ucsd.edu [132.239.145.52]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 882D08FC13 for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:23:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from neldredge@math.ucsd.edu) Received: from zeno.ucsd.edu (zeno.ucsd.edu [132.239.145.22]) by euclid.ucsd.edu (8.11.7p3+Sun/8.11.7) with ESMTP id m6CM4bB05892 for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (neldredg@localhost) by zeno.ucsd.edu (8.11.7p3+Sun/8.11.7) with ESMTP id m6CM4bI24087 for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:04:37 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: zeno.ucsd.edu: neldredg owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:04:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Nate Eldredge X-X-Sender: neldredg@zeno.ucsd.edu To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Mailman-Approved-At: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:49:11 +0000 Subject: SCHED_4BSD bad interactivity on 7.0 vs 6.3 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:23:15 -0000 Hi folks, Hopefully this is a good list for this topic. It seems like there has been a regression in interactivity from 6.3-RELEASE to 7.0-RELEASE when using the SCHED_4BSD scheduler. After upgrading my single-cpu amd64 box, 7.0 has much worse latency. When running a kernel compile, there is a noticeable lag to echo my typing or scroll my browser windows, and playing an mp3 frequently cuts out for a second or two. This did not happen on 6.3-RELEASE. I wrote a small program which forks two processes that run gettimeofday() in a tight loop to see how long they get scheduled out. On 6.3 the maximum latency is usually under 100 ms. On 7.0 it is 500 ms or more even when nothing else is running on the system. When a compile is also running it is sometimes 1400 ms or more. SCHED_ULE is much better, so I've switched over. But it's not the default yet, and most people are still going to be using SCHED_4BSD. It used to be acceptable but now it isn't. Does anyone know why it's regressed so badly? -- Nate Eldredge neldredge@math.ucsd.edu