Linux Device Drivers Development

Work deferring mechanism

Deferring is a method by which you schedule a piece of work to be executed in the future. It's a way to report an action later. Obviously, the kernel provides facilities to implement such a mechanism; it allows you to defer functions, whatever their type, to be called and executed later. There are three of them in the kernel:

• SoftIRQs: Executed in an atomic context
• Tasklets: Executed in an atomic context
• Workqueues: Executed in a process context