KSOFTIRQD(9)               Linux Programmer's Manual              KSOFTIRQD(9)

NAME

       ksoftirqd - Softirq daemon

DESCRIPTION

       ksoftirqd  is  a  per-cpu  kernel  thread that runs when the machine is
       under heavy soft-interrupt load.  Soft interrupts are normally serviced
       on  return from a hard interrupt, but it's possible for soft interrupts
       to be triggered more quickly than they can  be  serviced.   If  a  soft
       interrupt  is  triggered  for  a  second time while soft interrupts are
       being handled, the ksoftirq daemon is  triggered  to  handle  the  soft
       interrupts in process context.  If ksoftirqd is taking more than a tiny
       percentage of CPU time, this indicates the machine is under heavy  soft
       interrupt load.

HISTORY

       ksoftirqd  was  introduced during the 2.3 development series as part of
       the softnet work by Alexey Kuznetsov and David Miller.

Linux 2.6.0                       2003-08-24                      KSOFTIRQD(9)