Introducing Technology Into the Linux Kernel: A Case Study

There can be no doubt that a great many technologies have been added to Linux TM over the past ten years. What is less well-known is that it is often necessary to introduce a large amount of Linux into a given technology in order to successfully introduce that technology into Linux. This paper illustrates such an introduction of Linux into technology with Read-Copy Update (RCU). The RCU API's evolution over time clearly shows that Linux's extremely diverse set of workloads and platforms has changed RCU to a far greater degree than RCU has changed Linux - and it is reasonable to expect that other technologies that might be proposed for inclusion into Linux would face similar challenges.