Note that on multiprocessor machines, the bad effect does not occur.
This is really a single processor problem, and for those operating
systems that do an immediate context switch from a task writing to a
pty or pipe to a task having a select system call on it.

At the very least, we need a well-optimized path for small process
output sizes to deal with that problem.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum