1. A system, comprising: a plurality of CPUs; a memory coupled to said CPUs, said memory including a computer readable storage medium tangibly embodying at least one program of instructions executable by said CPUs to perform operations for shielding real-time workloads from operating system (OS) jitter due to expedited read-copy update (RCU) grace periods, said operations comprising: setting a kernel parameter indicating that expedited RCU grace periods are to be suppressed; checking said kernel parameter to determine if it is set; and invoking a normal non-expedited RCU grace period in response to attempted invocation of an expedited RCU grace period if said checking reveals that said kernel parameter is set.