[bnoordhuis]

> Don't things like real time linux or soft real time patches for linux help, though ?

I don't see how it could.

The CPU essentially drops everything it's doing when a packet comes in. Have that happen often enough and there won't be time left to do anything else, unless you start dropping packets.

[MichaelGG]

Doesn't interrupt moderation and receive-side scaling (new Intel NICs can even do rule-based queue distribution) sort this out?

[nupark2]

We see this behavior on high pps routers -- but isn't this why you have multiple CPUs and thread-based interrupt handling?