this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
537 points (93.0% liked)

linuxmemes

21282 readers
284 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
    •  

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.

    founded 1 year ago
    MODERATORS
    poopsmith@lemmy.world
    zephyr@lemmy.world
    rtxn@lemmy.world
    537
    No Mercy (files.catbox.moe)
    submitted 4 months ago by sag@lemm.ee to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
    158 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] sxan@midwest.social 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

    As I said, we live in post-meltdown world. Microkernels are MUCH slower.

    I've heard this from several people, but you're the lucky number by which I'd heard it enough that I bothered to gather some references to refute this.

    First, this is an argument that derived from first generation microkernels, and in particular, MINIX, which - as a teaching aid OS, never tried to play the benchmark game. It's been repeated, like dogma, through several iterations of microkernels which have, in the interim, largely erased most of those performance leads of monolithic kernels. One paper notes that, once the working code exceeds the L2 cache size, there is marginal advantage to the monolithic structure. A second paper running benchmarks on L^4^Linux vs Linux concluded that the microkernel penalty was only about 5%-10% slower for applications than the Linux monolithic kernel.

    This is not MUCH slower, and - indeed - unless you're doing HPC applications, is close enough to be unnoticeable.

    Edit: I was originally going to omit this, as it's propaganda from a vested interest, and includes no concrete numbers, but this blog entry from a product manager at QNX specifically mentions using microkernels in HPC problem spaces, which I thought was interesting, so I'm post-facto including it.

    [–] uis@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    First, this is an argument that derived from first generation microkernels, and in particular, MINIX, which - as a teaching aid OS, never tried to play the benchmark game.

    Indeed, first generation microkernels were so bad, that Jochen Liedtke in rage created L3 "to show how it's done". While it was faster than existing microkernels, it was still slow.

    One paper notes that, once the working code exceeds the L2 cache size, there is marginal advantage to the monolithic structure.

    1. The paper was written in pre-meltdown era.
    2. The paper is about hybrid kernels. And gutted Mach(XNU) is used as example.
    3. Nowdays(after meltdown) all cache levels are usually invalidated during context switch. Processors try to add mechanisms to avoid this, but they create new vulnreabilities.

    A second paper running benchmarks on L^4^Linux vs Linux concluded that the microkernel penalty was only about 5%-10% slower for applications than the Linux monolithic kernel.

      1. Waaaaay before meltdown era.

    I'll mark quotes from paper as doublequotes.

    a Linux version that executes on top of a first- generation Mach-derived µ-kernel.

    1. So, hybrid kernel. Not as bad as microkernel.

    The corresponding penalty is 5 times higher for a co-located in-kernel version of MkLinux, and 7 times higher for a user- level version of MkLinux.

    Wait, what? Co-located in-kernel? So, loadable module?

    In particular, we show (1) how performance can be improved by implementing some Unix services and variants of them directly above the L4 µ-kernel

    1. No surprise here. Hybrids are faster than microkernels. Kinda proves my point, that moving close to monolithic improves performance.

    Right now I stopped at the end of second page of this paper. Maybe will continue later.

    this blog entry

    Will read.