On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 12:54 -0400, Chris Metcalf wrote:
> The tile architecture uses this framework for our serial console,
> and our users complain that the delay of up to two seconds feels like
> the machine has gone non-responsive and is disturbing.  By contrast,
> a delay of up to half a second feels like just the normal sort of
> delay caused by swapping, network lag, etc. and is not noticeable.
> The overhead is obviously not much greater.

It's 4 times greater.

We picked 2 seconds because it gave a reasonable trade off between
responsiveness and load. I'm not convinced that half a second is a
better number.

cheers