Jake Edge writes “Stuttering audio or an unresponsive desktop – typically caused by operating system latency – are two things that annoy users. They can be difficult problems to diagnose, though, as they are transient and buried deep inside the [Linux] kernel. A new tool, LatencyTOP, seeks to provide more information on where latency is occurring so that it can be fixed or avoided.”
Read more: http://lwn.net/Articles/266153/