From: Thomas Richard <thomas.richard@bootlin.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2026 12:46:52 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: kernel: add preemption models
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=5d720117f7060e789ea4435f044166837af83354;p=thirdparty%2Fopenwrt.git

kernel: add preemption models

Introduce preemption model selection with PREEMPT_NONE as the default.
PREEMPT_NONE is the traditional Linux preemption model and also the best
choice for servers.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Richard <thomas.richard@bootlin.com>
Link: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/21413
Signed-off-by: Hauke Mehrtens <hauke@hauke-m.de>
---

diff --git a/config/Config-kernel.in b/config/Config-kernel.in
index 86920632292..870e53206a9 100644
--- a/config/Config-kernel.in
+++ b/config/Config-kernel.in
@@ -1492,3 +1492,72 @@ config KERNEL_WERROR
 	  and unusual warnings, or you have some architecture with problems,
 	  you may need to disable this config option in order to
 	  successfully build the kernel.
+
+choice
+	prompt "Preemption Model"
+	default KERNEL_PREEMPT_NONE
+
+config KERNEL_PREEMPT_NONE
+	bool "No Forced Preemption (Server)"
+	help
+	  This is the traditional Linux preemption model, geared towards
+	  throughput. It will still provide good latencies most of the
+	  time, but there are no guarantees and occasional longer delays
+	  are possible.
+
+	  Select this option if you are building a kernel for a server or
+	  scientific/computation system, or if you want to maximize the
+	  raw processing power of the kernel, irrespective of scheduling
+	  latencies.
+
+config KERNEL_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY
+	bool "Voluntary Kernel Preemption (Desktop)"
+	help
+	  This option reduces the latency of the kernel by adding more
+	  "explicit preemption points" to the kernel code. These new
+	  preemption points have been selected to reduce the maximum
+	  latency of rescheduling, providing faster application reactions,
+	  at the cost of slightly lower throughput.
+
+	  This allows reaction to interactive events by allowing a
+	  low priority process to voluntarily preempt itself even if it
+	  is in kernel mode executing a system call. This allows
+	  applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the system is
+	  under load.
+
+	  Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop system.
+
+config KERNEL_PREEMPT
+	bool "Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)"
+	help
+	  This option reduces the latency of the kernel by making
+	  all kernel code (that is not executing in a critical section)
+	  preemptible.  This allows reaction to interactive events by
+	  permitting a low priority process to be preempted involuntarily
+	  even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call and would
+	  otherwise not be about to reach a natural preemption point.
+	  This allows applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the
+	  system is under load, at the cost of slightly lower throughput
+	  and a slight runtime overhead to kernel code.
+
+	  Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop or
+	  embedded system with latency requirements in the milliseconds
+	  range.
+
+config KERNEL_PREEMPT_RT
+	bool "Fully Preemptible Kernel (Real-Time)"
+	depends on (x86_64 || aarch64 || riscv64)
+	help
+	  This option turns the kernel into a real-time kernel by replacing
+	  various locking primitives (spinlocks, rwlocks, etc.) with
+	  preemptible priority-inheritance aware variants, enforcing
+	  interrupt threading and introducing mechanisms to break up long
+	  non-preemptible sections. This makes the kernel, except for very
+	  low level and critical code paths (entry code, scheduler, low
+	  level interrupt handling) fully preemptible and brings most
+	  execution contexts under scheduler control.
+
+	  Select this if you are building a kernel for systems which
+	  require real-time guarantees.
+
+endchoice