[scottlamb]

I like this chart. In particular, I like that they break apart "thread context switch (direct costs)" and "thread context switch (total costs, including cache invalidation)". I've often heard that context switches are cheap because people only consider the direct costs.

[quotemstr]

Context switches are cheap because context switches are cheap. You can, with enough finnegaling, make the "indirect costs" of anything arbitrarily high.