Sun 4 \"KNEE\" Wars

John Mashey mash at mips.COM
Sat Jun 11 15:26:27 AEST 1988


In article <16138 at brl-adm.ARPA> weiser.pa at xerox.com writes:
>aglew at urbsdc.urbana.gould.com says:
>"I don't have Sun 4 source at hand right now, but if their scheduler
>is similar to the standard BSD scheduler a process coming out of
>a sleep may [*] have its priority boosted. ...[further explanation here...]"
>
>But this explanation doesn't explain why Sun's show this behavior and Vaxes
>don't, nor why Sun-3's, with 8 MMU contexts, show the knee at 8 fast sleepers,
>and Sun-4 with 16 MMU contexts show it at 16!

A VAX uses a TLB, whose user portion must be flushed upon each context
switch, i.e., in some sense, it has 1 context (although this is not
strictly the same kind of context, as it does not need to be mass
saved/restored).  Hence, there is no reason for a VAX to have a
MMU-related knee anywhere.
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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