Re: SCO: "thread creation is about a thousand times faster than on native Linux"

From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Date: Wed Aug 23 2000 - 14:28:22 EST


On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Andi Kleen wrote:
>
> So you would prefer a two level threads library ?

Read as "continuations in user space"? Sure.

It's not that I agree or prefer it, it's just that I don't care at that
point ;)

> [you probably agree that it is silly to have java programs with 20 threads
> each eating a kernel stack -- and there are not only java programs which
> use that wasteful programming style. java programs at least have the
> excuse of a stupid API that forces them to do such stuff]

I suspect the Java run-time had better do a lot of these decisions itself.
I don't think they are all that appropriate decisions to make for the
kernel.

> continuations are just a lot of what the two level library would do in user
> space put more efficiently into kernel space (like multiplexing poll)

I don't think it's an issue of efficiency - you end up doing the work
anyway. It may well be true that some of the interfaces aren't perfect for
Java threads, and maybe that could be improved upon, but I can't say that
I've seen any really convincing arguments for "performance" and "Java"
yet.

                Linus

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