site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716) Terry, Kind regards, Alejandro -- Alejandro Palencia Open Studio Networks +34 667 440 770 _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-kernel mailing list (Darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-kernel/site_archiver%40lists.a... Thank you for your answer. It has been a good direction. You are right, disk reads (invalidating caches or otherwise) are not the problem. After a lot of tests I have found that any memory allocations done by a non-realtime thread cause the blocking (about 10mS) in the realtime threads. Because the problem arises very unfrequently (average every hour) the testing is very slow. So my question is, Is there any system-wide locking mechanism when a malloc is performed? If this is the case, I will create my own memory pool for this purpose. This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com