Re: spin_lock and linux philosophy question...

David S. Miller (davem@redhat.com)
Mon, 13 Sep 1999 06:43:41 -0700


Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 06:19:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>

But that brings up a larger question of why there are spin
locks at all? If a CPU can't be doing one thing because a
particular resource is unavailable being used by another CPU, why
isn't it then sent off to do something else?

Please read "Unix Systems for Modern Architectures" by Curt Schimmel
for a good primer on spinlocks and why they are used in an OS.

Later,
David S. Miller
davem@redhat.com

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