Linux 2.6.37 boosts SMP, loads up on drivers
The Linux 2.6.37 kernel was released this week with improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability and the addition of many new hardware drivers. Other 2.6.37 highlights include security, power management, and memory management enhancements, plus an I/O throttling speed boost, and (finally) a disabled Big Kernel Lock.
While our attention was drawn to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the kernel underlying behind many of the hottest new tablets, smartphones, media servers, and other devices at the show received an upgrade. The Linux kernel, which underlies Android, MeeGo, WebOS, Chrome OS, and other no-name embedded OS implementations, not to mention Ubuntu and other desktop Linux distros, plus a good share of the world's servers, has now emerged in its 2.6.37 incarnation.
Announced by Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Jan. 4, Linux 2.6.37 follows up on an October release of Linux 2.6.36, which featured the integration of the AppArmor security framework. That release also introduced support for the Tilera multicore architecture, a redesign of workqueues, an Out-of-Memory (OOM) killer, debugging and latency enhancements, and a partial implementation of VFS virtualization scalability patches.
