Re: RCU Kconfig help text

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Sat Sep 05 2009 - 16:01:55 EST


On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 09:27:10AM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote:
> init/Kconfig says:
>
> "choice
> prompt "RCU Implementation"
> default TREE_RCU
>
> config TREE_RCU
> bool "Tree-based hierarchical RCU"
> help
> This option selects the RCU implementation that is
> designed for very large SMP system with hundreds or
> thousands of CPUs. It also scales down nicely to
> smaller systems.
>
> config TREE_PREEMPT_RCU
> bool "Preemptable tree-based hierarchical RCU"
> depends on PREEMPT
> help
> This option selects the RCU implementation that is
> designed for very large SMP systems with hundreds or
> thousands of CPUs, but for which real-time response
> is also required.
>
> endchoice"
>
> This leaves somebody who has a laptop wondering which choice is best for
> a system with only one or two cores that has CONFIG_PREEMPT defined. One
> choice says it scales down nicely, the other explicitly has a 'depends on
> PREEMPT' attached to it...
>
> (Yes, I realize in practice, the RCU sections on a laptop are probably usually
> so short they don't matter in practice. I finally concluded TREE_PREEMPT was
> apparently a rename of CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU and went with that since that was
> working for me before...)

Good point -- I will add the "It also scales down nicely to smaller
systems" to TREE_PREEMPT_RCU.

For -really- small systems, TINY_RCU will hopefully be there at some
point, but it can only handle single-CPU systems.

Thanx, Paul
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