Well, the BKL is still a semaphore in 25.
For my hackbench runs, I have:
[root@bxrhel51 c]# cat hack-test-2.6.25.4-rt2
Time: 4.937
Time: 4.842
Time: 4.877
Time: 4.905
Time: 4.924
Time: 4.781
Time: 4.927
Time: 4.871
Time: 5.181
Time: 4.866
Which is a bit slower than 2.6.24.7-rt7:
[root@bxrhel51 c]# cat hack-test-2.6.24.7-rt7
Time: 4.789
Time: 4.824
Time: 4.807
Time: 4.867
Time: 4.802
Time: 4.799
Time: 4.823
Time: 4.855
Time: 4.873
Time: 4.833
But then I checked the base kernels themselves:
[root@bxrhel51 c]# cat hack-test-2.6.24.7
Time: 3.817
Time: 3.921
Time: 3.887
Time: 3.920
Time: 3.874
Time: 3.858
Time: 3.912
Time: 3.926
Time: 3.888
Time: 3.901
[root@bxrhel51 c]# cat hack-test-2.6.25.4
Time: 6.225
Time: 6.319
Time: 6.257
Time: 6.534
Time: 6.077
Time: 6.787
Time: 6.927
Time: 6.218
Time: 5.929
Time: 6.554
Where there's a regression somewhere. For 25, the RT patch is actually
*better* than mainline!
So I was thinking it had to do with the BKL regression, and then I ran:
[root@bxrhel51 c]# cat hack-test-2.6.26-rc3
Time: 6.789
Time: 7.123
Time: 6.197
Time: 5.496
Time: 6.708
Time: 5.609
Time: 6.679
Time: 6.206
Time: 6.351
Time: 5.969
Here it is no better, and the BKL has been converted into a spin lock.
But I'm very much busy working on -rt right now to dig deeper into this
regression.
-- Steve
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