The Linux Kernel is developing at a rapid pace. More and more features are added to the kernel. This leads to growth of the kernel binary (kernel bloat) but also to an increased cache footprint as well as higher complexity in critical code paths. The common experience is that the kernel becomes slower as time progresses. Faster hardware is needed to offset that effect.   The increase in cache footprint and complexity also leads to OS monitoring tasks such as the execution of the timer interrupt to become more invasive. The time the processor is taken away from the application during a scheduling cycle grows and so does the CPU cache use of the OS. This causes disturbances in the execution path of applications. The effects can be drastic for low latency dependent applications.