Re: [announce] "kill the Big Kernel Lock (BKL)" tree

[Andi Kleen]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 15 May 2008, Andi Kleen wrote:
>> The goal less being to get rid of BKL in old drivers, but not 
>> requiring BKL in new drivers. Basically all BKL assumptions
>> in interfaces really should go.
> 
> No, we really do want to get rid of BKL in old drivers too. Or at least in 
> the interfaces.

In the interfaces definitely yes and all subsystems should have their
own lock_kernel calls, but why in the old drivers? For those it's very
unlikely they are used on any SMP system anyways (e.g. anything
depending on CONFIG_ISA) or if they do only on 2 CPU systems.

Of course if you can find someone to do the work it wouldn't be
bad, just wouldn't seem like a particularly useful investment of time to
me.

Also it would be bad if the people who did such conversions didn't
actually test it and that's a great danger with many old drivers because
nearly nobody has the hardware (and if they do it won't be in a SMP system)

-Andi

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