Building upon the success of last year, we propose a combined microconference focused on the Real-Time and Scheduler subsystems. These two areas are fundamentally intertwined and continue to drive cross-cutting changes, especially following the upstream integration of PREEMPT_RT. The Linux scheduler is central to overall system performance. Addressing the challenges of modern computing—from achieving low latency to maximizing high throughput across diverse topologies and workloads, and scaling from small, power-constrained devices to large-scale HPC systems—is key to delivering the optimal user experience.
Since last year’s microconference, progress has been made on the following topics:
- Cache aware scheduler
- Paravirt Scheduling: Framework for better physical CPU utilization
- CPU Isolation and IPI interference
- Push callback for fair scheduler
- Runtime verification
- Proxy execution
Discussions on certain topics were also carried forward at the OSPM 2026 conference.
Ideas of topics to be discussed include (but are not limited to):
- Responsiveness of fair tasks
- Improve PREEMPT_RT
- Locking and priority inversion
- Improve SCHED_DEADLINE
- CPU isolation
- New topology, including hybrid or heterogeneous system
- Tooling for debugging low latency analysis
This is not an exhaustive list. We welcome all proposals related to process scheduling. The goal is to discuss open problems, preferably with patch set submissions already being discussed on the mailing list. Presentations are meant to be limited to 2 or 3 slides intended to seed a discussion and debate – allowing for high bandwidth discussion with key stakeholders in the same room.
Key attendees:
- Ingo Molnar
- Peter Zijlstra
- Juri Lelli
- Vincent Guittot
- Dietmar Eggemann
- Steven Rostedt
- Ben Segall
- Mel Gorman
- Valentin Schneider
- K Prateek Nayak
- Thomas Gleixner
- John Stulz
- Sebastian Andrzej Siewior
- Shrikanth Hegde
- Phil Auld
- Dhaval Giani
- Clark Williams