On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 01:03 +0200, Florian Schmidt wrote: > Some semieducated blabbering ahead (might be all wrong): > > I think i once read that interrupt handling "short circuits" the linux > scheduler (in the sense that not only at every timer interrupt but also > at the end of finishing any interrupt handler the kernel looks which > processes are ready to run etc. and maybe there's a high prio process > waiting just for that interrupt (by i.e. polling or reading on a device > file). > > So for all those realtime processes that depend on events that are > triggering interrupts (like soundcards' irqs) the timer interrupt really > doesn't matter. I'm not sure at all though this applies to midi handling > (and especially to alsa_seq when routing from one app to another) or is > even correct in any sense at all :) > > Anyone can shed light? > Correct, it's not an issue for apps driven by hardware interrupts like JACK, because the sound card consumes data at a constant rate. But for MIDI or video where you have to periodically push data to the device it matters. Lee
