of polling interfaces at the lowest possible priority
(this might result in softnetisr being scheduled, but there is
no risk of livelock because they have a higher priority than
this thread).
Non-SMP, i386-only, no polling in the idle loop at the moment.
To use this code you must compile a kernel with
options DEVICE_POLLING
and at runtime enable polling with
sysctl kern.polling.enable=1
The percentage of CPU reserved to userland can be set with
sysctl kern.polling.user_frac=NN (default is 50)
while the remainder is used by polling device drivers and netisr's.
These are the only two variables that you should need to touch. There
are a few more parameters in kern.polling but the default values
are adequate for all purposes. See the code in kern_poll.c for
more details on them.
Polling in the idle loop will be implemented shortly by introducing
a kernel thread which does the job. Until then, the amount of CPU
dedicated to polling will never exceed (100-user_frac).
The equivalent (actually, better) code for -stable is at
http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/polling/
and also supports polling in the idle loop.
NOTE to Alpha developers:
There is really nothing in this code that is i386-specific.
If you move the 2 lines supporting the new option from
sys/conf/{files,options}.i386 to sys/conf/{files,options} I am
pretty sure that this should work on the Alpha as well, just that
I do not have a suitable test box to try it. If someone feels like
trying it, I would appreciate it.
NOTE to other developers:
sure some things could be done better, and as always I am open to
constructive criticism, which a few of you have already given and
I greatly appreciated.
However, before proposing radical architectural changes, please
take some time to possibly try out this code, or at the very least
read the comments in kern_poll.c, especially re. the reason why I
am using a soft netisr and cannot (I believe) replace it with a
simple timeout.
Quick description of files touched by this commit:
sys/conf/files.i386
new file kern/kern_poll.c
sys/conf/options.i386
new option
sys/i386/i386/trap.c
poll in trap (disabled by default)
sys/kern/kern_clock.c
initialization and hardclock hooks.
sys/kern/kern_intr.c
minor swi_net changes
sys/kern/kern_poll.c
the bulk of the code.
sys/net/if.h
new flag
sys/net/if_var.h
declaration for functions used in device drivers.
sys/net/netisr.h
NETISR_POLL
sys/dev/fxp/if_fxp.c
sys/dev/fxp/if_fxpvar.h
sys/pci/if_dc.c
sys/pci/if_dcreg.h
sys/pci/if_sis.c
sys/pci/if_sisreg.h
device driver modifications
