[PATCH] i386: Selectable Frequency of the Timer Interrupt

Make the timer frequency selectable. The timer interrupt may cause bus
and memory contention in large NUMA systems since the interrupt occurs
on each processor HZ times per second.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <christoph@lameter.com>
Signed-off-by: Shai Fultheim <shai@scalex86.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 46 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/Kconfig.hz b/kernel/Kconfig.hz
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..248e1c396f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/kernel/Kconfig.hz
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+#
+# Timer Interrupt Frequency Configuration
+#
+
+choice
+        prompt "Timer frequency"
+        default HZ_250
+        help
+         Allows the configuration of the timer frequency. It is customary
+         to have the timer interrupt run at 1000 HZ but 100 HZ may be more
+         beneficial for servers and NUMA systems that do not need to have
+         a fast response for user interaction and that may experience bus
+         contention and cacheline bounces as a result of timer interrupts.
+         Note that the timer interrupt occurs on each processor in an SMP
+         environment leading to NR_CPUS * HZ number of timer interrupts
+         per second.
+
+
+        config HZ_100
+                bool "100 HZ"
+        help
+          100 HZ is a typical choice for servers, SMP and NUMA systems
+          with lots of processors that may show reduced performance if
+          too many timer interrupts are occurring.
+
+        config HZ_250
+                bool "250 HZ"
+        help
+         250 HZ is a good compromise choice allowing server performance
+         while also showing good interactive responsiveness even
+         on SMP and NUMA systems.
+
+        config HZ_1000
+                bool "1000 HZ"
+        help
+         1000 HZ is the preferred choice for desktop systems and other
+         systems requiring fast interactive responses to events.
+
+endchoice
+
+config HZ
+        int
+        default 100 if HZ_100
+        default 250 if HZ_250
+        default 1000 if HZ_1000
+