kernel threads

[Robert Watson]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Julian Elischer wrote:

> the KSE stuff requires too much assistance from teh Userland Thread
> scheduler. 
> 
> HOWEVER it is possible that kthreads may one day be implemented as
> multiple threads of a single kernel process..  (but not yet) 

John has been talking about doing this for a while -- clustering the
kernel threads into a smaller number of kernel processes or a single
kernel process.  This is the approach Darwin takes as well, FWIW -- they
have a kernel_task in which all the various kernel threads hang out, which
avoids the overhead of full processes, as well as the emotional baggage. 
I think I saw John put it on his TODO list in Perforce, so maybe it's
coming soon :-). 

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research