NYCPHP Meetup

[Tim Gales]

RE:
> What are the added benefits the Linux kernel 2.6 will
> offer vs the 2.4 kernel?

Briefly the 2.6 Linux kernel has:

contributions from uClinux 
(Linux for Microcontrollers project)

support for Axis Communications' ETRAX CRIS 
("Code Reduced Instruction Set") processors
(some support was in 2.4 already)

support for NUMA 
("Non-Uniform Memory Access")

(I am a little sketchy on what NUMA is exactly.
But from what I gather certain segments of 
memory can have a stronger affinity for a 
cpu -- or a dma device acting like a cpu -- 
in a multi-cpu setup. NUMA allows a cpu to 
sort of hop-over memory with which it doesn't 
have much/enough affinity.)

Support for hyper-threading ala Pentium 4.

The kernel is  preemptible -- the Linux kernel 
can be interrupted to do something and return to 
what it was doing.

I/O scheduler had a makeover.

futex support
(Fast User-Space Mutexes)

(I am a little sketchy on futexes too -- 
I think they help to serialize access to 
the user space mutexes to help prevent 
race conditions something like "spinlocks" 
with an aditional priority based mechanism)

In summary, the 2.6 Linux kernel has more and 
better hardware support. And a bunch of 
'high end' enhancements for servers.


T. Gales & Associates 
Helping People Connect with Technology 
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