What is Big Kernel Lock?

[Matt Schulte]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 3:03 AM, sandeep kumar
<coolsandyforyou at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
> Can any one tell me the significance of BKL?
>
> --
> With regards,
> Sandeep Kumar Anantapalli,

In a very small nutshell, the BKL makes it so that only one thread of
the kernel can be running at any one time.  It made it nice for
kernel/driver developers to not have to worry about SMP issues when
running on multiple CPUs.  But at the same time it makes the kernel
very inefficient when executing in an SMP system.

Matt Schulte