Re: [linux-audio-dev] lowish-latency patch and toolchain

From: Juhana Sadeharju (kouhia@nic.funet.fi)
Date: Sat Jul 08 2000 - 16:33:26 EDT

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    >From: "Khimenko Victor" <khim@sch57.msk.ru>
    >>>doing silly things, the scheduling latency is reliably 4 milliseconds on
    >>>a 500MHz machine. Very occasionally reaches 7 millisecs. It has been
    >
    >> Lets talk about 7 ms latency only -- 4 ms is useless information in audio
    >> software which has to be 101% reliable.
    >
    >Sorry. It was said 1000 times already but I can repeat once more just for you:
    >101% reliability => HARD real time => RTLinux. Period. If you NEED 101%

    Forget that 101%.
    The most above quote tells me that scheduling latency is practically
    reliable with 10 ms latency (while taking account those not-to-do's).
    If only 7 ms peaks are observed, it looks 101% reliable to me.

    It would be very silly to talk that Linux would have 1 ms latency
    if it reaches it only once a week. Get the point? Lets not talk about
    4 ms latency but 7 ms from practical point.

    Development point is that 4 ms is reached at most of the time and somehow
    we should get those 7 ms occasional latencies away. Remember, this was the
    situation before Ingo's patch, and I'm sure we reach the reliable 4 ms
    latency.

    >> That is poor compared to earlier results 2.5 ms.
    >
    >It can be expected. There NO WAY IN HELL to include Ingo's original patch
    >in kernel, so stop talking about it already. It REALLY starting to look like

    I was not suggesting that. We should look at a possible good way to solve
    this problem. I'm not happy with 4 ms audio-I/O latency, but it could be
    reached. I'm willing to dig in to this mess just in case more people means
    more suggestions, at least in this case.

    >-- cut --
    >My guess is you'll be digging yourself in deeper and deeper,
    >sprinkling random hacks in random places, as Linus put it.
    >-- cut --

    My own audio code design is a far from a hack. Everything is very well
    organized, well thought. I would like to see if I'm able to say my opinion
    in kernel's low-latency matters from non-hacker's point of view.

    >Huh ? What's "the most important points of how kernel works" ???

    How about telling what are those 6 points where the patch additionally
    schedules? A good start. You don't need to give me a full lecture.

    >Basically Ingo added extra scheduling everywhere where it looked right
    >on first glance without deep investigation - with just few benchmarks
    >(AFAIK anyway).

    Yep. I would like to see more scientific analysis, and would like to help
    on that.

    >Since there are MUCH less pre-emption points.

    Were they choosed the same way than Ingo choosed his points?
    Empirically based on a program analyser whatever...?
    If yes, we at least have a way to improve if this patch is ignored
    as well.

    Yes, I think Ingo's patch is kludge, and wonder if this new one is
    another kludge.

    >I'm not sure if it's possible for Linux kernel at all (it's really easy
    >do draw principal diagram of dataflow in linux but what it'll buy you?

    Hey, I just wanted a short cut for understanding the issues related to
    low-latency audio, not the full lecture on kernel design.

    Juhana

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