Unfinished: Big Kernel Lock removal The BKL is a holdover from 2.0 Controlled access to the kernel Made early SMP support possible The BKL is little-used now Fine-grained threading is the rule Lockless algorithms used when possible It lives on, however: ioctl() methods (and others) Much of /proc RPC daemon Core dumps File locking Various drivers In 2.7, the BKL could finally die ...maybe