From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 26 09:09:41 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7342516A4CE; Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:09:41 +0000 (GMT) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2506643D41; Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:09:41 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id i9Q99DDv027992; Tue, 26 Oct 2004 05:09:13 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)i9Q99DTV027989; Tue, 26 Oct 2004 10:09:13 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 10:09:13 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Scott Long In-Reply-To: <417DB5E1.7000308@freebsd.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-current Subject: Re: HEADS UP: ULE off in 5.3 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:09:41 -0000 On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Scott Long wrote: > A lot of poeple have noted recently that a lot of bug reports are coming > in with strange symptoms, and only after a lot of detective work does it > turn out that the submitter is using the ULE scheduler. We turned off > the ULE scheduler months ago and tried to make it clear that it has > problems and is not considered stable. Since there are likely many > people out there that might not be aware of what scheduler they are > using, I've set the ULE source code to error out and not compile at all > for RELENG_5 and RELENG_5_3. The time spent debugging ULE-induced > problems is causing way too much lost time, and we need to focus on > debugging the supported configurations, not the unsupported ones. FYI for everyone else, as I know Scott knows this already, but a number of the features that gave ULE higher throughput on some SMP boxes are now also available with SCHED_4BSD, such as the use of IPIs to wake up idle CPUs more quickly when there's load to shed. I've seen dramatic improvements in scheduling, especially on SMP, with 4BSD over the last few months, and the results have done good things to the performance numbers for applications such as MySQL. 4BSD doesn't have everything ULE had, such as per-cpu run queues, but it's still a good step up from what shipped in 5.2. Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research