Thank you Fernando and David, Yes, the person that gave me advise was not an audio oriented guy. That´s more clear now. Just a newbie question here: do you have to determine what programs will have privileges? How the system knows how to handle taks of audio and non-audio programs at the same time? 2010/7/21 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > On Wed, 2010-07-21 at 17:35 +0200, David Sommerseth wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> On 19/07/10 18:57, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote: >> > On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 13:46 -0300, Bernardo Barros wrote: >> >> > For this low-level task some engineering would be required? I'm not >> >> > this kind of guy who know much about tasks scheduling and priorities >> >> > (kernel level) but some people told me that real-time kernels patches >> >> > could slow down Fedora and I should not use it. >> > >> > Did those people by any chance provide you with _numbers_ that tell you >> > exactly what part of the kernel is impacted and by how much? (and, who >> > are they?) My guess is probably not. >> > >> > Yes, perhaps the rt patches could affect performance. Maybe. In some >> > subsystems (disk i/o, network come to mind). Maybe by a few %, in some >> > specific situations. I don't think the impact will be something you will >> > notice unless you measure it. >> >> To put things a bit straight. Yes, RT kernel will affect performance. >> Point. > > Agreed (for the reasons you explain below). > > I'd like to add that in the context of real-time performance for audio, > the lack of an RT kernel will also affect performance for the worse. So, > it depends on your goals. In the context of this list (music) Bernardo > comments he got the recommendation to not run RT kernels for performance > reasons ("some people told me that real-time kernels patches could slow > down Fedora and I should not use it"). > > If you are running a server, don't (unless, of course, you print money > by running thousands of trades a minute and you need millisecond > scheduling for that - that is why we have the rt patches after all :-). > If you are running a music oriented workstation that should handle > real-time interaction, then I'd say yes, run it. > > There are no black and white rules here. If you try the Fedora kernel > and it works for you in your particular music oriented situation then > run that. > > -- Fernando > > >> Will you notice it effectively on "normal desktop tasks"? Probably not >> much, but it depends on how your system is saturated, tuned and what >> kind of loads you have running. Real Time is not Real Fast and never >> will be. A real time kernel will not give any fair scheduling to your >> system, basically. > > (depends on your definition of "fair", for the purposes of an RT kernel > it schedules processes fairly, giving the rt tasks priority as is > intended by design). > >> All tasks (processes) which is set to use the SCHED_FIFO or SCHED_RR >> scheduling, even on the lowest priority will preempt and run it first >> over, ignoring all other SCHED_OTHER (normal) processes. SCHED_FIFO and >> SCHED_RR tasks with the highest priority will be processed before all >> other tasks, whenever they receive signals which requires these >> processes to run. This is the core nature of a real time system. >> >> So if you don't have many SCHED_FIFO or SCHED_RR tasks, and that they >> are light - you most probably will not notice anything at all. But in >> the moment you begin with heavy I/O dependent operations or other >> operations which requires processing time and the kernel have given them >> SCHED_FIFO scheduling and a rather high priority (which is not >> uncommon), it will slow down all the other running tasks. But this >> behaviour is possible to tune! >> >> So why would you want to run a real time kernel instead of a so called >> "real fast" kernel (normal kernels)? Latency determination. A real >> time kernel will strive to give you a predictable system latency, no >> matter how loaded your computer is. Which is a key-point for audio and >> video - you don't want the sound or video stream to be delayed because >> cron and updatedb wants to run. >> >> Some relevant information can be found here: >> >> <http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_MRG/1.2/html/Realtime_Installation_Guide/chap-Realtime_Installation_Guide-Why_Use_RT_to_Optimize_Latency.html> >> >> >> <http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_MRG/1.2/html/Realtime_Reference_Guide/index.html> >> >> >> <http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_MRG/1.2/html/Realtime_Tuning_Guide/index.html> >> >> >> kind regards, >> >> David Sommerseth >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) >> Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ >> >> iEYEARECAAYFAkxHE9YACgkQIIWEatLf4He6ZwCgjaodaHQY0KJue5TfTZiVhE0d >> mIEAnRksu5hm9bP6oGUu5ufRh2V1ESt/ >> =vj0G >> -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >> _______________________________________________ >> music mailing list >> music@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/music > > > _______________________________________________ music mailing list music@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/music