Re: wake_up vs. wake_up_sync

[Manfred Spraul]

> I'm having trouble understanding the difference between these.
> Synchronous apparently causes try_to_wake_up() to NOT call
> reschedule_idle() but I'm uncertain what reschedule_idle() is doing. I
> assume it just looks for an idle CPU and makes that CPU reschedule.
> 
> What is the purpose of wake_up_sync?

Avoid the reschedule_idle() call - it's quite costly, and it could cause
processes jumping from one cpu to another.

> Why would you want to prevent
> reschedule_idle()?
> 
If one process runs, wakes up another process and _knows_ that it's
going to sleep immediately after the wake_up it doesn't need the
reschedule_idle: the current cpu will be idle soon, the scheduler
doesn't need to find another cpu for the woken up thread.

I think the pipe code is the only user of _sync right now - pipes cause
an incredible amount of task switches.

--
	Manfred