Linux Scalability Effort / News: Recent posts

Great info about using the OSDL's many machines to test your code. If you want to see test results of your projects code on some of the larger machines available the OSDL is the place to do i!

Minutes from the latest meeting with great info available here:

http://lse.sourceforge.net/mtg/minutes/120303

Hanna

Agenda forthcoming.

http://lse.sourceforge.net/mtg/minutes/032103

Minutes are available here:
http://lse.sourceforge.net/mtg/minutes/030703

http://lse.sourceforge.net/mtg/minutes/022103

Erich Focht, Michael Hohnbaum and Martin Bligh
will be discussing scheduler issues on NUMA architectures and their work at the next Conference Call. To ask questions or talk with them please join us at:
USA toll free: 1-877-849-9636
International toll: +1-719-457-5110
Passcode: 372406

Minutes are located at,
http://lse.sf.net/mtg/minutes/082302

A patch has been created which removes the BKL from the release
functions of over 50 drivers' release functions. The release
functions are already serialized in the VFS code by an atomic_t
which guarantees that each function will be called only once, after
all file descriptors have been closed. In addition, in these
drivers, the BKL was _only_ held in the release function and
nowhere else in the driver where it might be needed.... read more

These Design Notes consider the kernel system mechanisms and interfaces appropriate to support process memory placement and cpu scheduling selection. This is the capability to place task scheduling and memory allocation onto specific processors and memory nodes.

This is the third version of these Design Notes. SGI is currently implementing this design as an Open Source patch, which it hopes to have accepted into the main stream kernel (Mosberger's 2.4-based IA kernel and Linux 2.5).

Paul McKenney has updated the simple-binding NUMA APIs. There is a new version of the NUMA
description document at:

http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/numastatusdesc.html

There is a new document describing simple-binding APIs at:

http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/numa_api.html

And a rationale document at:
http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/numa_api_rationale.html

Send questions and comments to Paul at paulmckenney@users.sourceforge.net... read more

Patricia Gaughen has updated the NUMA status document (version 0.5) which is available at:

http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/numastatus.html

This document attempts to capture the work that is happening in the NUMA space. Since it's based on what I hear/see, I'm sure it's missing some pieces of work that are going on. So, if you are involved in NUMA, please have a look at the web page and let me know what should be added/modified/removed.... read more

These Design Notes consider the kernel system mechanisms
and interfaces appropriate to support process memory
placement and cpu scheduling selection. This is the
capability to place task scheduling and memory allocation
onto specific processors and memory banks and to select
and specify the operating parameters of certain kernel
task scheduling and memory allocation policies.

These Notes are provided at an early stage of the design
and development, in what is potentially a controversial
area. Feedback welcome.

This is a document which attempts to document both the existence and usage of spinlocks in the Linux kernel (currently 2.4.5). This is intended as a reference document, which should allow developers to determine correct usage of such locks. All interested parties are invited to review the document and send feedback.

A little rearranging, added in IRC info, LBS link