History log of /freebsd-10.1-release/sys/kern/kern_idle.c
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# 272461 02-Oct-2014 gjb

Copy stable/10@r272459 to releng/10.1 as part of
the 10.1-RELEASE process.

Approved by: re (implicit)
Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation

# 256281 10-Oct-2013 gjb

Copy head (r256279) to stable/10 as part of the 10.0-RELEASE cycle.

Approved by: re (implicit)
Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation


# 222531 31-May-2011 nwhitehorn

On multi-core, multi-threaded PPC systems, it is important that the threads
be brought up in the order they are enumerated in the device tree (in
particular, that thread 0 on each core be brought up first). The SLIST
through which we loop to start the CPUs has all of its entries added with
SLIST_INSERT_HEAD(), which means it is in reverse order of enumeration
and so AP startup would always fail in such situations (causing a machine
check or RTAS failure). Fix this by changing the SLIST into an STAILQ,
and inserting new CPUs at the end.

Reviewed by: jhb


# 198854 03-Nov-2009 attilio

Split P_NOLOAD into a per-thread flag (TDF_NOLOAD).
This improvements aims for avoiding further cache-misses in scheduler
specific functions which need to keep track of average thread running
time and further locking in places setting for this flag.

Reported by: jeff (originally), kris (currently)
Reviewed by: jhb
Tested by: Giuseppe Cocomazzi <sbudella at email dot it>


# 177253 16-Mar-2008 rwatson

In keeping with style(9)'s recommendations on macros, use a ';'
after each SYSINIT() macro invocation. This makes a number of
lightweight C parsers much happier with the FreeBSD kernel
source, including cflow's prcc and lxr.

MFC after: 1 month
Discussed with: imp, rink


# 173051 26-Oct-2007 julian

rename the process to 'idle' and 'intr' as per jhb.


# 173050 26-Oct-2007 julian

Initialise the initial process pointer to NULL so that we know we don't
have an idle process yet.
I'm guessing that on my system this was always 0 already.

found by: Ed Schouten


# 173035 26-Oct-2007 julian

oops, over optimised and broke non-SMP builds


# 173004 26-Oct-2007 julian

Introduce a way to make pure kernal threads.
kthread_add() takes the same parameters as the old kthread_create()
plus a pointer to a process structure, and adds a kernel thread
to that process.

kproc_kthread_add() takes the parameters for kthread_add,
plus a process name and a pointer to a pointer to a process instead of just
a pointer, and if the proc * is NULL, it creates the process to the
specifications required, before adding the thread to it.

All other old kthread_xxx() calls return, but act on (struct thread *)
instead of (struct proc *). One reason to change the name is so that
any old kernel modules that are lying around and expect kthread_create()
to make a process will not just accidentally link.

fix top to show kernel threads by their thread name in -SH mode
add a tdnam formatting option to ps to show thread names.

make all idle threads actual kthreads and put them into their own idled process.
make all interrupt threads kthreads and put them in an interd process
(mainly for aesthetic and accounting reasons)
rename proc 0 to be 'kernel' and it's swapper thread is now 'swapper'

man page fixes to follow.


# 172836 20-Oct-2007 julian

Rename the kthread_xxx (e.g. kthread_create()) calls
to kproc_xxx as they actually make whole processes.
Thos makes way for us to add REAL kthread_create() and friends
that actually make theads. it turns out that most of these
calls actually end up being moved back to the thread version
when it's added. but we need to make this cosmetic change first.

I'd LOVE to do this rename in 7.0 so that we can eventually MFC the
new kthread_xxx() calls.


# 170307 04-Jun-2007 jeff

Commit 14/14 of sched_lock decomposition.
- Use thread_lock() rather than sched_lock for per-thread scheduling
sychronization.
- Use the per-process spinlock rather than the sched_lock for per-process
scheduling synchronization.

Tested by: kris, current@
Tested on: i386, amd64, ULE, 4BSD, libthr, libkse, PREEMPTION, etc.
Discussed with: kris, attilio, kmacy, jhb, julian, bde (small parts each)


# 166188 23-Jan-2007 jeff

- Remove setrunqueue and replace it with direct calls to sched_add().
setrunqueue() was mostly empty. The few asserts and thread state
setting were moved to the individual schedulers. sched_add() was
chosen to displace it for naming consistency reasons.
- Remove adjustrunqueue, it was 4 lines of code that was ifdef'd to be
different on all three schedulers where it was only called in one place
each.
- Remove the long ifdef'd out remrunqueue code.
- Remove the now redundant ts_state. Inspect the thread state directly.
- Don't set TSF_* flags from kern_switch.c, we were only doing this to
support a feature in one scheduler.
- Change sched_choose() to return a thread rather than a td_sched. Also,
rely on the schedulers to return the idlethread. This simplifies the
logic in choosethread(). Aside from the run queue links kern_switch.c
mostly does not care about the contents of td_sched.

Discussed with: julian

- Move the idle thread loop into the per scheduler area. ULE wants to
do something different from the other schedulers.

Suggested by: jhb

Tested on: x86/amd64 sched_{4BSD, ULE, CORE}.


# 164936 06-Dec-2006 julian

Threading cleanup.. part 2 of several.

Make part of John Birrell's KSE patch permanent..
Specifically, remove:
Any reference of the ksegrp structure. This feature was
never fully utilised and made things overly complicated.
All code in the scheduler that tried to make threaded programs
fair to unthreaded programs. Libpthread processes will already
do this to some extent and libthr processes already disable it.

Also:
Since this makes such a big change to the scheduler(s), take the opportunity
to rename some structures and elements that had to be moved anyhow.
This makes the code a lot more readable.

The ULE scheduler compiles again but I have no idea if it works.

The 4bsd scheduler still reqires a little cleaning and some functions that now do
ALMOST nothing will go away, but I thought I'd do that as a separate commit.

Tested by David Xu, and Dan Eischen using libthr and libpthread.


# 164211 12-Nov-2006 davidxu

Use mi_switch, this should fix loadavg calculation problem in NO_KSE case.


# 163709 26-Oct-2006 jb

Make KSE a kernel option, turned on by default in all GENERIC
kernel configs except sun4v (which doesn't process signals properly
with KSE).

Reviewed by: davidxu@


# 144637 04-Apr-2005 jhb

Divorce critical sections from spinlocks. Critical sections as denoted by
critical_enter() and critical_exit() are now solely a mechanism for
deferring kernel preemptions. They no longer have any affect on
interrupts. This means that standalone critical sections are now very
cheap as they are simply unlocked integer increments and decrements for the
common case.

Spin mutexes now use a separate KPI implemented in MD code: spinlock_enter()
and spinlock_exit(). This KPI is responsible for providing whatever MD
guarantees are needed to ensure that a thread holding a spin lock won't
be preempted by any other code that will try to lock the same lock. For
now all archs continue to block interrupts in a "spinlock section" as they
did formerly in all critical sections. Note that I've also taken this
opportunity to push a few things into MD code rather than MI. For example,
critical_fork_exit() no longer exists. Instead, MD code ensures that new
threads have the correct state when they are created. Also, we no longer
try to fixup the idlethreads for APs in MI code. Instead, each arch sets
the initial curthread and adjusts the state of the idle thread it borrows
in order to perform the initial context switch.

This change is largely a big NOP, but the cleaner separation it provides
will allow for more efficient alternative locking schemes in other parts
of the kernel (bare critical sections rather than per-CPU spin mutexes
for per-CPU data for example).

Reviewed by: grehan, cognet, arch@, others
Tested on: i386, alpha, sparc64, powerpc, arm, possibly more


# 141246 04-Feb-2005 ssouhlal

Set the scheduling class of the idle threads to PRI_IDLE.
While there, set their priority with sched_prio() instead of changing it
'by hand'.

Reviewed by: jhb
Approved by: grehan (mentor)


# 134591 01-Sep-2004 julian

Give the 4bsd scheduler the ability to wake up idle processors
when there is new work to be done.

MFC after: 5 days


# 132637 25-Jul-2004 imp

Expand the generic, but bogusly formed, copyright notice to include
the license from /usr/src/COPYRIGHT. Since cvs annotate shows that
this was written by jasone, julian, jhb, peter, bmilekic and obrien.
cvs log shows that many others may have contributed to this file. As
such, go ahead and use the author of 'FreeBSD Project' for this file.
If this is a problem, please notify me.

# this eliminates the last file in the kernel with an indirect reference
# to /usr/src/COPYRIGHT in the kernel. A few more in userland remain.


# 131473 02-Jul-2004 jhb

- Change mi_switch() and sched_switch() to accept an optional thread to
switch to. If a non-NULL thread pointer is passed in, then the CPU will
switch to that thread directly rather than calling choosethread() to pick
a thread to choose to.
- Make sched_switch() aware of idle threads and know to do
TD_SET_CAN_RUN() instead of sticking them on the run queue rather than
requiring all callers of mi_switch() to know to do this if they can be
called from an idlethread.
- Move constants for arguments to mi_switch() and thread_single() out of
the middle of the function prototypes and up above into their own
section.


# 131243 28-Jun-2004 jhb

Adjust the priority of the idle threads to be the lowest possible
priority. This is just a comestic nit as the idle thread priorities aren't
used by the schedulers.

Reported by: bde


# 125496 05-Feb-2004 jhb

Always set a process' state to normal when it is fully constructed in
fork1() rather than only doing it for the RFSTOPPED case and then having
to fix it up in other places later on.


# 124944 25-Jan-2004 jeff

- Add a flags parameter to mi_switch. The value of flags may be SW_VOL or
SW_INVOL. Assert that one of these is set in mi_switch() and propery
adjust the rusage statistics. This is to simplify the large number of
users of this interface which were previously all required to adjust the
proper counter prior to calling mi_switch(). This also facilitates more
switch and locking optimizations.
- Change all callers of mi_switch() to pass the appropriate paramter and
remove direct references to the process statistics.


# 121238 19-Oct-2003 peter

Tidy up loose ends in the idle process. Call the MI cpu_idle() function
for all platforms now.

XXX alpha/sparc64/powerpc should fill in the function.

Submitted by: bde


# 121149 17-Oct-2003 peter

Halt the cpu on amd64 as well. For some strange reason, this makes
a fair bit of difference to the power consumption and lets my cpu cool
down enough for the temperature sensitive fan controller to completely
stop the cpu fan at times.


# 121148 17-Oct-2003 marcel

Implement cpu_idle() on ia64. We put the processor in a lightweight
halt state that minimizes power consumption while still preserving
cache and TLB coherency. Halting the processor is not conditional at
this time. Tested with UP and SMP kernels.


# 116182 10-Jun-2003 obrien

Use __FBSDID().


# 114471 01-May-2003 julian

Move the flag that indicates an idle thread from the KSE to the thread.
It was always referenced via the thread anyhow.

Reviewed by: jhb (a LOOOOONG time ago)


# 113629 17-Apr-2003 jhb

Add some locking in for a few proc and thread fields.


# 104964 12-Oct-2002 jeff

- Create a new scheduler api that is defined in sys/sched.h
- Begin moving scheduler specific functionality into sched_4bsd.c
- Replace direct manipulation of scheduler data with hooks provided by the
new api.
- Remove KSE specific state modifications and single runq assumptions from
kern_switch.c

Reviewed by: -arch


# 104354 02-Oct-2002 scottl

Some kernel threads try to do significant work, and the default KSTACK_PAGES
doesn't give them enough stack to do much before blowing away the pcb.
This adds MI and MD code to allow the allocation of an alternate kstack
who's size can be speficied when calling kthread_create. Passing the
value 0 prevents the alternate kstack from being created. Note that the
ia64 MD code is missing for now, and PowerPC was only partially written
due to the pmap.c being incomplete there.
Though this patch does not modify anything to make use of the alternate
kstack, acpi and usb are good candidates.

Reviewed by: jake, peter, jhb


# 103216 11-Sep-2002 julian

Completely redo thread states.

Reviewed by: davidxu@freebsd.org


# 101176 01-Aug-2002 julian

Slight cleanup of some comments/whitespace.
Make idle process state more consistant.
Add an assert on thread state.
Clean up idleproc/mi_switch() interaction.
Use a local instead of referencing curthread 7 times in a row
(I've been told curthread can be expensive on some architectures)
Remove some commented out code.
Add a little commented out code (completion coming soon)

Reviewed by: jhb@freebsd.org


# 100261 17-Jul-2002 julian

Make sure the process state for the idle proc is set correctly
from the beginning.


# 99942 14-Jul-2002 julian

Thinking about it I came to the conclusion that the KSE states were incorrectly
formulated. The correct states should be:
IDLE: On the idle KSE list for that KSEG
RUNQ: Linked onto the system run queue.
THREAD: Attached to a thread and slaved to whatever state the thread is in.

This means that most places where we were adjusting kse state can go away
as it is just moving around because the thread is..
The only places we need to adjust the KSE state is in transition to and from
the idle and run queues.

Reviewed by: jhb@freebsd.org


# 99072 29-Jun-2002 julian

Part 1 of KSE-III

The ability to schedule multiple threads per process
(one one cpu) by making ALL system calls optionally asynchronous.
to come: ia64 and power-pc patches, patches for gdb, test program (in tools)

Reviewed by: Almost everyone who counts
(at various times, peter, jhb, matt, alfred, mini, bernd,
and a cast of thousands)

NOTE: this is still Beta code, and contains lots of debugging stuff.
expect slight instability in signals..


# 90361 07-Feb-2002 julian

Pre-KSE/M3 commit.
this is a low-functionality change that changes the kernel to access the main
thread of a process via the linked list of threads rather than
assuming that it is embedded in the process. It IS still embeded there
but remove all teh code that assumes that in preparation for the next commit
which will actually move it out.

Reviewed by: peter@freebsd.org, gallatin@cs.duke.edu, benno rice,


# 88088 17-Dec-2001 jhb

Modify the critical section API as follows:
- The MD functions critical_enter/exit are renamed to start with a cpu_
prefix.
- MI wrapper functions critical_enter/exit maintain a per-thread nesting
count and a per-thread critical section saved state set when entering
a critical section while at nesting level 0 and restored when exiting
to nesting level 0. This moves the saved state out of spin mutexes so
that interlocking spin mutexes works properly.
- Most low-level MD code that used critical_enter/exit now use
cpu_critical_enter/exit. MI code such as device drivers and spin
mutexes use the MI wrappers. Note that since the MI wrappers store
the state in the current thread, they do not have any return values or
arguments.
- mtx_intr_enable() is replaced with a constant CRITICAL_FORK which is
assigned to curthread->td_savecrit during fork_exit().

Tested on: i386, alpha


# 87702 11-Dec-2001 jhb

Overhaul the per-CPU support a bit:

- The MI portions of struct globaldata have been consolidated into a MI
struct pcpu. The MD per-CPU data are specified via a macro defined in
machine/pcpu.h. A macro was chosen over a struct mdpcpu so that the
interface would be cleaner (PCPU_GET(my_md_field) vs.
PCPU_GET(md.md_my_md_field)).
- All references to globaldata are changed to pcpu instead. In a UP kernel,
this data was stored as global variables which is where the original name
came from. In an SMP world this data is per-CPU and ideally private to each
CPU outside of the context of debuggers. This also included combining
machine/globaldata.h and machine/globals.h into machine/pcpu.h.
- The pointer to the thread using the FPU on i386 was renamed from
npxthread to fpcurthread to be identical with other architectures.
- Make the show pcpu ddb command MI with a MD callout to display MD
fields.
- The globaldata_register() function was renamed to pcpu_init() and now
init's MI fields of a struct pcpu in addition to registering it with
the internal array and list.
- A pcpu_destroy() function was added to remove a struct pcpu from the
internal array and list.

Tested on: alpha, i386
Reviewed by: peter, jake


# 83366 12-Sep-2001 julian

KSE Milestone 2
Note ALL MODULES MUST BE RECOMPILED
make the kernel aware that there are smaller units of scheduling than the
process. (but only allow one thread per process at this time).
This is functionally equivalent to teh previousl -current except
that there is a thread associated with each process.

Sorry john! (your next MFC will be a doosie!)

Reviewed by: peter@freebsd.org, dillon@freebsd.org

X-MFC after: ha ha ha ha


# 82757 01-Sep-2001 jhb

Remove #if 0'd remnants of the old idle page zeroing.


# 76440 10-May-2001 jhb

- Split out the support for per-CPU data from the SMP code. UP kernels
have per-CPU data and gdb on the i386 at least needs access to it.
- Clean up includes in kern_idle.c and subr_smp.c.

Reviewed by: jake


# 76166 01-May-2001 markm

Undo part of the tangle of having sys/lock.h and sys/mutex.h included in
other "system" header files.

Also help the deprecation of lockmgr.h by making it a sub-include of
sys/lock.h and removing sys/lockmgr.h form kernel .c files.

Sort sys/*.h includes where possible in affected files.

OK'ed by: bde (with reservations)


# 76078 27-Apr-2001 jhb

Overhaul of the SMP code. Several portions of the SMP kernel support have
been made machine independent and various other adjustments have been made
to support Alpha SMP.

- It splits the per-process portions of hardclock() and statclock() off
into hardclock_process() and statclock_process() respectively. hardclock()
and statclock() call the *_process() functions for the current process so
that UP systems will run as before. For SMP systems, it is simply necessary
to ensure that all other processors execute the *_process() functions when the
main clock functions are triggered on one CPU by an interrupt. For the alpha
4100, clock interrupts are delievered in a staggered broadcast fashion, so
we simply call hardclock/statclock on the boot CPU and call the *_process()
functions on the secondaries. For x86, we call statclock and hardclock as
usual and then call forward_hardclock/statclock in the MD code to send an IPI
to cause the AP's to execute forwared_hardclock/statclock which then call the
*_process() functions.
- forward_signal() and forward_roundrobin() have been reworked to be MI and to
involve less hackery. Now the cpu doing the forward sets any flags, etc. and
sends a very simple IPI_AST to the other cpu(s). AST IPIs now just basically
return so that they can execute ast() and don't bother with setting the
astpending or needresched flags themselves. This also removes the loop in
forward_signal() as sched_lock closes the race condition that the loop worked
around.
- need_resched(), resched_wanted() and clear_resched() have been changed to take
a process to act on rather than assuming curproc so that they can be used to
implement forward_roundrobin() as described above.
- Various other SMP variables have been moved to a MI subr_smp.c and a new
header sys/smp.h declares MI SMP variables and API's. The IPI API's from
machine/ipl.h have moved to machine/smp.h which is included by sys/smp.h.
- The globaldata_register() and globaldata_find() functions as well as the
SLIST of globaldata structures has become MI and moved into subr_smp.c.
Also, the globaldata list is only available if SMP support is compiled in.

Reviewed by: jake, peter
Looked over by: eivind


# 72376 11-Feb-2001 jake

Implement a unified run queue and adjust priority levels accordingly.

- All processes go into the same array of queues, with different
scheduling classes using different portions of the array. This
allows user processes to have their priorities propogated up into
interrupt thread range if need be.
- I chose 64 run queues as an arbitrary number that is greater than
32. We used to have 4 separate arrays of 32 queues each, so this
may not be optimal. The new run queue code was written with this
in mind; changing the number of run queues only requires changing
constants in runq.h and adjusting the priority levels.
- The new run queue code takes the run queue as a parameter. This
is intended to be used to create per-cpu run queues. Implement
wrappers for compatibility with the old interface which pass in
the global run queue structure.
- Group the priority level, user priority, native priority (before
propogation) and the scheduling class into a struct priority.
- Change any hard coded priority levels that I found to use
symbolic constants (TTIPRI and TTOPRI).
- Remove the curpriority global variable and use that of curproc.
This was used to detect when a process' priority had lowered and
it should yield. We now effectively yield on every interrupt.
- Activate propogate_priority(). It should now have the desired
effect without needing to also propogate the scheduling class.
- Temporarily comment out the call to vm_page_zero_idle() in the
idle loop. It interfered with propogate_priority() because
the idle process needed to do a non-blocking acquire of Giant
and then other processes would try to propogate their priority
onto it. The idle process should not do anything except idle.
vm_page_zero_idle() will return in the form of an idle priority
kernel thread which is woken up at apprioriate times by the vm
system.
- Update struct kinfo_proc to the new priority interface. Deliberately
change its size by adjusting the spare fields. It remained the same
size, but the layout has changed, so userland processes that use it
would parse the data incorrectly. The size constraint should really
be changed to an arbitrary version number. Also add a debug.sizeof
sysctl node for struct kinfo_proc.


# 72222 09-Feb-2001 jhb

- Point out that we don't lock anything during the idle setup because
only the boot processor should be running in the comments.
- Initialize curproc to point to each CPU's respective idleproc if their
curproc is NULL.
- Keep track of the number of context switches performed by idleproc.


# 72200 09-Feb-2001 bmilekic

Change and clean the mutex lock interface.

mtx_enter(lock, type) becomes:

mtx_lock(lock) for sleep locks (MTX_DEF-initialized locks)
mtx_lock_spin(lock) for spin locks (MTX_SPIN-initialized)

similarily, for releasing a lock, we now have:

mtx_unlock(lock) for MTX_DEF and mtx_unlock_spin(lock) for MTX_SPIN.
We change the caller interface for the two different types of locks
because the semantics are entirely different for each case, and this
makes it explicitly clear and, at the same time, it rids us of the
extra `type' argument.

The enter->lock and exit->unlock change has been made with the idea
that we're "locking data" and not "entering locked code" in mind.

Further, remove all additional "flags" previously passed to the
lock acquire/release routines with the exception of two:

MTX_QUIET and MTX_NOSWITCH

The functionality of these flags is preserved and they can be passed
to the lock/unlock routines by calling the corresponding wrappers:

mtx_{lock, unlock}_flags(lock, flag(s)) and
mtx_{lock, unlock}_spin_flags(lock, flag(s)) for MTX_DEF and MTX_SPIN
locks, respectively.

Re-inline some lock acq/rel code; in the sleep lock case, we only
inline the _obtain_lock()s in order to ensure that the inlined code
fits into a cache line. In the spin lock case, we inline recursion and
actually only perform a function call if we need to spin. This change
has been made with the idea that we generally tend to avoid spin locks
and that also the spin locks that we do have and are heavily used
(i.e. sched_lock) do recurse, and therefore in an effort to reduce
function call overhead for some architectures (such as alpha), we
inline recursion for this case.

Create a new malloc type for the witness code and retire from using
the M_DEV type. The new type is called M_WITNESS and is only declared
if WITNESS is enabled.

Begin cleaning up some machdep/mutex.h code - specifically updated the
"optimized" inlined code in alpha/mutex.h and wrote MTX_LOCK_SPIN
and MTX_UNLOCK_SPIN asm macros for the i386/mutex.h as we presently
need those.

Finally, caught up to the interface changes in all sys code.

Contributors: jake, jhb, jasone (in no particular order)


# 67365 20-Oct-2000 jhb

Catch up to moving headers:
- machine/ipl.h -> sys/ipl.h
- machine/mutex.h -> sys/mutex.h


# 67308 19-Oct-2000 jhb

Axe the idle_event eventhandler, and add a MD cpu_idle function used
for things such as halting CPU's, idling CPU's, etc.

Discussed with: msmith


# 67297 18-Oct-2000 peter

EVENTHANDLER_INVOKE() takes two arguments.


# 67280 18-Oct-2000 jhb

Don't needlessly pass the diagnostic counter to the idle_event event
handlers.


# 67266 17-Oct-2000 jhb

- Wrap the sanity checks for staying in the idle loop for absurdly long
amounts of time in #ifdef DIAGNOSTIC
- Call vm_page_zero_idle() during the idle loop.


# 66698 05-Oct-2000 jhb

- Heavyweight interrupt threads on the alpha for device I/O interrupts.
- Make softinterrupts (SWI's) almost completely MI, and divorce them
completely from the x86 hardware interrupt code.
- The ihandlers array is now gone. Instead, there is a MI shandlers array
that just contains SWI handlers.
- Most of the former machine/ipl.h files have moved to a new sys/ipl.h.
- Stub out all the spl*() functions on all architectures.

Submitted by: dfr


# 66207 22-Sep-2000 msmith

Create an event (idle_event) which is invoked every time around the
idle loop. Machine-dependant code can elect to eg. take power-saving
actions when this event is invoked.


# 65905 15-Sep-2000 jhb

Remove some commented out cruft.


# 65904 15-Sep-2000 jhb

- Add a new process flag P_NOLOAD that marks a process that should be
ignored during load average calcuations.
- Set this flag for the idle processes and the softinterrupt process.


# 65900 15-Sep-2000 jhb

Idle processes are always runnable, so let them state at SRUN.


# 65557 06-Sep-2000 jasone

Major update to the way synchronization is done in the kernel. Highlights
include:

* Mutual exclusion is used instead of spl*(). See mutex(9). (Note: The
alpha port is still in transition and currently uses both.)

* Per-CPU idle processes.

* Interrupts are run in their own separate kernel threads and can be
preempted (i386 only).

Partially contributed by: BSDi (BSD/OS)
Submissions by (at least): cp, dfr, dillon, grog, jake, jhb, sheldonh