Linux kernel developers have released an updated kernel featuring capabilities to offload processing and to boost power management.
Released last week, release 2.6.24 of the kernel features a generic interface point for large receive offload support, said Theodore Tso, one of the maintainers of the Linux file system. This is useful for fast 10 GB and higher Ethernet drivers that want to offload some TCP processing to the card, he said.
For embedded development, the kernel features tickless support, in which the CPU is not interrupted regularly on architectures such as Arm and Mips. This improves CPU efficiency and power utilization, which is beneficial to embedded systems developers, Tso said.
The release also features resource management and virtualization improvements, in which groups of processes can be segmented in their own container, making them less likely to affect other processes, Tso said. Also, specific tasks can be assigned limits on CPU consumption.
Also featured are new device drivers and read only bind mounts, which allows a portion of a file system hierarchy to be transplanted and offered elsewhere in a read-only view. This can be useful for virtualization, Tso said.
It will be up to different Linux distributors to decide when to offer the kernel improvements, Tso said. Kernel updates are offered by kernel developers about every two to three months, he said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 28, 2008 05:14 PM
