Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 7:46 UTC (Mon) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810)
In reply to: Well, this settles it for me by yoshi314
Parent article: BFS vs. mainline scheduler benchmarks and measurements

Hi,

> i've been getting the impression recently that core kernel devs are totally
> disconnected from the desktop world. ingo's choice of hardware is not too
> odd, but still unrealistic for most desktop users (or at least where i
> live).

I've bought a new desktop rig three months ago and paid not unreasonable 1100 euro for a quad core (+hyper-threading) i7 processor backed up by 6gb ram.

I do not believe that Linux should target < 1000 Euro machines (at least not for mainline development). If there's use for another scheduler Con can keep it out-of-tree (as he seems to intend to). When distributions pick it up it might even get into mainline. But his childish behaviour after Ingo benchmarked his patch (with a workload that was well within the Con's use case description) does not bode well. Not well at all.

cheers, Andreas

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Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 8:03 UTC (Mon) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (4 responses)

So the whole focus on netbooks is a waste of time, then? The majority of laptops and desktops these days cost less than 1000 Euros/USD - in fact when building a new dual-core desktop system for casual web surfing I found it hard to spend more than 400 euros, and the resulting system is far faster than really needed. And then there's the whole embedded space of course, and all the people introduced to Linux by putting it on PCs that are too old to run a recent Windows version well, or by turning an old PC into a small server.

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 8:11 UTC (Mon) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810) [Link] (3 responses)

> So the whole focus on netbooks is a waste of time, then?

I was talking about _mainline_. Pray read the rest of my post (where I mentined out-of-tree patches). And AFAIK embedded systems often have out-of-tree patchsets for their architectures.

> The majority of laptops and desktops these days cost less than 1000 Euros/USD

If some scheduler thing would be added to the kernel this would take 2-3 release cycles (at least).. by which time multi-core systems are even more common than today.

cheers, Andreas

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 15:45 UTC (Mon) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link] (2 responses)

Embedded systems are using fewer and fewer non-mainline patches - essentially all the CPU vendors who don't have good mainline support are experiencing substantial pressure to sort that situation out sooner rather than later.

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 16:01 UTC (Mon) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810) [Link] (1 responses)

wouldn't the situation be the same with an out-of-tree scheduler? If it would reap benefits then pressure for inclusion would build up.

cheers, Andreas

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 16:25 UTC (Mon) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link]

Yes, though Con's disinterest in that might be an issue.

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 8:30 UTC (Mon) by sitaram (guest, #5959) [Link]

You must be channeling Marie Antoinette... :-)

You will not believe the number of people in India who still use P4s (and God even P3s sometimes). Far more than the Core2Duo kind, I rather suspect. Maybe not in new purchases but in total numbers. We don't throw away stuff so fast anyway.

After reading your email I'm even more convinced that Ingo did not understand what Con was trying to say (*)

Sitaram

(*) ...or he did but didn't want to risk saying the sort of stuff you said ;-)

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 9:13 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (2 responses)

> I do not believe that Linux should target < 1000 Euro machines

Maybe you're living on a different planet. The only time I've ever spent anything like that much was my first PC back in 1994 - a 66MHz 486.

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 12:46 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Maybe you're living on a different planet. The only time I've ever spent anything like that much was my first PC back in 1994 - a 66MHz 486.

Indeed. Although there can be good reasons for paying 1000 (or £1000) for a system, it's been a long time since anyone really had to. It reminds me of the "Killer PCs for £1500" idiocy the UK computing press used to run on the cover of their magazines every month back in the early-to-mid 1990s, and even at that time such dull retail summaries served the advertisers far more than they did the actual readership.

Well, this settles it for me

Posted Sep 7, 2009 16:07 UTC (Mon) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810) [Link]

> Maybe you're living on a different planet.

Could be, I'm using it for coding and running statistics stuff mostly (while doing 'normal' video/music listening).

But that thing did cost me around 1000 euro four months ago and would be under that by now.. and will be fairly standard *before* a new scheduler would be added to mainline.

People that experiencing performance or latency problems on existing hardware might be better of if they would just *report* their problems to the lkml. Ingo is quite responsive to feedback.

(embedded usage differs.. but that is something that the market (tm) should be perfectly able to decide).