KSOFTIRQD(9) Linux Programmer's Manual KSOFTIRQD(9)NAMEksoftirqd - Softirq daemon
DESCRIPTIONksoftirqd 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.
HISTORYksoftirqd 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)