Re: Summer of Code: Extending Multi-Processing (MP) support

["Justin C. Sherrill" <justin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, April 27, 2008 6:39 am, Robert Luciani wrote:
> Alright! Time to get going :)
>
> First order of business: questionnaire
>
> As you might have guessed, my main motivation with working on
> parallelizing parts of the kernel is an academic / recreational one as
> opposed to  an "applied interest" one. Given that, I probably have a
> naive view on what would be most "useful" to begin and focus on...
> Therefore, what I would like to know, is what specific subsystems anyone
> would like to see prioritized, and why?

Viewpoint one: pragmatic:
Assuming some subsystems are more difficult than others, the best answer
would be "whatever you can finish in the alloted time".

Viewpoint two: efficient:
Aggelos and Sephe are both working on the network stack; would it be worth
coordinating with them?

Viewpoint three: also efficient:
Aggelos and Sephe are both working on the network stack, so pick anything
else, so that we can get as much of the system out from under the Giant
lock as possible.

Viewpoint four: wrong:
Fix up whatever systems will give us the best benchmark results. 
Preferably with some sort of database scenario as the benchmark.

I know these aren't a direct answer; I'm just typing out my immediate
thoughts on reading what you wrote.  (#4 is a joke!)  My 'real' answer
would be: Where do we face the biggest performance bottleneck right now
from a lack of parallelization?  That's what I'd want to target.