Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:24:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:24:28 -0400 Received: from garrincha.netbank.com.br ([200.203.199.88]:17681 "HELO netbank.com.br") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:24:17 -0400 Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:24:12 -0300 (BRST) From: Rik van Riel X-X-Sender: To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Marcelo Tosatti , Alan Cox , , Dave McCracken , Dirk Wetter Subject: Re: [PATCH] swap usage of high memory (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: X-spambait: aardvark@kernelnewbies.org X-spammeplease: aardvark@nl.linux.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Original-Recipient: rfc822;linux-kernel-outgoing On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Linus Torvalds wrote: > Note that the unfair aging (apart from just being a natural requirement of > higher allocation pressure) actually has some other advantages too: it > ends up being aload balancing thing. Sure, it might throw out some things > that get "unfairly" treated, but once we bring them in again we have a > better chance of bringing them into a zone that _isn't_ under pressure. > > So unfair eviction can actually end up being a natural solution to > different memory pressure too Note the difference between unfair aging and unfair eviction. Unfair eviction is needed and is no problem because with fair aging this will lead to a large surplus of inactive pages in less loaded zones, increasing the chances that future allocations will end up in those zones. Unfair aging, OTOH, throws away that information, making it harder for the system to get the pressure across the zones equal again. regards, Rik -- Virtual memory is like a game you can't win; However, without VM there's truly nothing to lose... http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/ Send all your spam to aardvark@nl.linux.org (spam digging piggy) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/