Advantages of a large number of threads cf other approaches?

[Mickael Remond]

* Joachim Durchholz <joachim.durchholz@REDACTED> [2004-02-17 12:36:45 +0100]:

> Joe, would you or Ali be interested in running the same test with a
> Linux 2.6 kernel? They implemented an O(1) scheduler there, and it would
> help to determine whether Apache's crash is due to OS process issues or
> due to Apache.

It seems that the kernel threading model in 2.6 improves scalability on
high-end SMP machines:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-web26/?ca=dgr-lnxw94KernCompare

Thread can be created more quickly. However, I do not know to which
extend the 2.6 thread are lighter than 2.4.
If the memory taken for each thread is still important, this is a direct
and quickly reached limitation to the number of thread you can manage.
You end up filling up the memory too quickly and soon start deterioating
performance.

Note Yaws should be tested with 2.6 either as some kernel improvments
can also benefit to it.

-- 
Mickaël Rémond
 http://www.erlang-projects.org/