Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/967016/

There are many mechanisms for deferred work in the Linux kernel. One of them,

workqueues, has seen increasing use as part of
the move away from software interrupts. Alison Chaiken gave a talk
at SCALE
about how they compare to software interrupts, the new challenges they pose for
system administrators, and what tools are available to
kernel developers wishing to diagnose problems with workqueues as they become
increasingly prevalent.