Re: Massive performance loss from OS::sleep hack

Daniel Eischen wrote:

When I removed this hack (i.e. revert to pthread_yield()) I got an immediate 7-fold performance increase, which brings FreeBSD performance on par with Solaris.

What is the reason why this code is necessary? Does FreeBSD's sched_yield() really have different semantics to the other operating systems, or was this a libkse bug that was being worked around?

It's certainly not a libkse bug, at least with scope process threads libkse does the right thinng. For scope system threads and all libthr
threads, it probably depends on what scheduler you are using since
it's essentially a __sys_sched_yield().

On a side note, I think pthread_yield() is deprecated and not in the
latest POSIX spec. sched_yield() is in the spec and is specified
to account for behavior in a threaded environment.

Yeah, libthr's pthread_yield just calls sched_yield. Anyway, it seems to me that the decision of what thread to run next is a scheduler decision, and if it is inappropriate for some reason for a scheduler to possibly choose to reschedule the same thread that just yielded, this is something that should be addressed in the scheduler rather than by adding hacks to the application.

Kris

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