A New BFS "Smoking" Scheduler For Linux 3.3

Con Kolivas announced this weekend the release of an updated BFS scheduler for the recently-released Linux 3.3 kernel. The new BFS scheduler is at version 0.420 and is codenamed "Smoking", with "a fairly large architectural change" since earlier versions of this out-of-tree kernel scheduler.

BFS, short for the Brain Fuck Scheduler, has been around for nearly three years now but continues to lack mainline ambitions by Con Kolivas for this scheduler that's designed for better performance out of commodity hardware. "This is to announce the first stable release of the BFS CPU scheduler for linux 3.3.0 designed for optimal interactivity, responsiveness and throughput on commodity hardware."

The architectural work for the BFS 0.420 Smoking scheduler comes as a result of bringing the code-base in sync for changes made to the Linux 3.3 kernel. Not much of this work should be visible to the end-user except for the high resolution IRQ accounting being on by default for x86 architectures. Plus there's other optimizations, as Con's benchmarks illustrate.

For more details on the updated Brain Fuck Scheduler for the Linux 3.3 kernel, read his kernel mailing list message. While not living in the mainline kernel, the BFS scheduler continues to be used within the PCLinuxOS, Sabayon, Zenwalk, and other Linux distributions; it's also been a popular patch for Linux desktop enthusiasts to toy around with manually.