If a sleeping low-latency task becomes runnable due to events (network, storage, timers) then ideally it would start running straight away, preempting a throughput-oriented task.
Is this not the case in Linux land? On Windows 7, I could run a CPU based bitcoin miner that pegged every core (including hyperthreads) to 100% and still browse the internet with zero stutter, latency, or slowdown, because the Windows scheduler had no issues giving whatever time was needed by the UI or Window Event processing loop and just feed whatever was leftover to the number crunching app.
I think they have priority boosting for apps that are in focus. It doesn't work for tasks in general though. Network/disk throughout takes a hit when your cpu is pegged, for instance.
This is not true. I frequently run heavy compile jobs on my Windows machine that peg all cores to 100%. If I don’t tell Visual Studio to run the compile tasks with background priority, they will starve the window server of resources a s make interacting with the system incredibly slow. I would not want to use such a machine for browsing.
