LinuxCon + ContainerCon North America 2016

Workqueue is an asynchronous execution mechanism that has an ubiquitous presence in the Linux Kernel. It's used for various purposes from simple context bouncing to hosting a persistent in-kernel service thread.

In this presentation, we will first discuss several performance issues that are enhanced by the Concurrency Managed Workqueue(CMWQ). We will then look at an example execution scenario which will illustrate how CMWQ serves as a robust async mechanism without introducing any noticeable performance degradation. This will be followed by an overview of the CMWQ API and its design. We will then walk through a number of examples from various parts of the kernel that will offer a comprehensive view of workqueues and its usages.