> How does all this fit into doing a tick-less kernel?
>
> There is something appealing about doing stuff only when there is
> stuff to do, like: respond to input, handle some device that becomes
> ready, or let another process run for a while. Didn't IBM do some
> nice work on this for Linux? (*Was* it nice work?) I was under the
> impression that the current kernel isn't that far from being tickless.
>
> A tickless kernel would be wonderful for battery powered devices that
> could literally shut off when there be nothing to do, and it seems it
> would (trivially?) help performance on high end power hogs too.
>
> Why do we have regular HZ ticks? (Other than I think I remember Linus
> saying that he likes them.)
Feel free to quantify the savings over the current setup with max power
saving enabled in the kernel. I just don't see how "wonderful" it would
be, given that an idle system currently uses very little battery if you
setup the options to save power.
-- bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/