Multiprocessor Considerations

On a multiprocessor machine, multiple processes could be attempting to access the device at the same time. This can cause thrashing. Some devices require a longer time to restore a device context. To prevent more CPU time from being used to restore a device context than to actually use that device context, the minimum time that a process needs to have access to the device can be set using devmap_set_ctx_timeout(9F).

The kernel guarantees that once a device driver has granted access to a process, no other process will be allowed to request access to the same device for the time interval specified by devmap_set_ctx_timeout(9F).