Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/915320/

The software-interrupt mechanism is one of the oldest parts in the kernel;
arguably, the basic design behind it predates Linux itself. Software
interrupts can get in the way of other work so, for almost as
long as they have existed, developers have wished that they
could be made to go away. That has never happened, though, and doesn’t
look imminent. Instead, Android systems have long carried a patch that
tries to minimize the impact of software interrupts, at least in some
situations. John Stultz is now posting
that work, which contains contributions from a number of authors, in
the hope of getting it into the mainline kernel.