Questions about processes

[Chuck Swiger]

Lord Raiden wrote:
>> These are kernel threads. 5.x is more modular than 4.x and a lot
>> of functionality has been moved to internal threads (for the sake
>> of SMP). There's really nothing wrong with this; esp. since the
>> number of threads is still pretty small :)
>>
>> The kernel may create more such threads if it needs them; like e.g.
>> when using GBDE or so.
> 
>         AH!  So that explains those.  Cool.  Good info to know.  ^_^  Is 
> there a benefit to these threads being modular if I might ask?  I'm sure 
> there is, but I'm just curious what they might be.

Sure.  These threads can be scheduled to run on any processor in a SMP system, 
and can run in parallel, whereas the older 4.x architecture had one giant lock 
over almost everything (called "Giant" :-), meaning only one kernel thread 
could run at a time, using only one CPU.

-- 
-Chuck