From: jlnance@unity.ncsu.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:37:08 -0400
To: mouschi@wi.rr.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Interesting VM feature?
Message-ID: <20030815123708.GA2231@ncsu.edu>
References: <13dedd139cb9.139cb913dedd@rdc-kc.rr.com>
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On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 09:17:07PM -0500, mouschi@wi.rr.com wrote:

> What this mempool wants to do is to be able to
> allocate a block of memory and tell the kernel which
> pages from it can be outright discarded, instead of
> swapped out when memory starts to get crowded. 

I think you might be able to get what you want with madvise() or perhaps
by mmap()ing new clean pages on top of the pages you want to throw away.

> I'm going to keep reading. If this is already
> implemented, or if the efficiency gains would be
> nil, somebody yell at me before I start crashing my

I would not implement this unless you either know you have a problem
with your mempool swap speed or you are bored.  I doubt it is going
to help a lot, and it will certainly simplify your code to leave it
out.  If you later find that you have performance problems you can
look into this again.

Thanks,

Jim
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