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Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 13:08:13 -0800
From: Ben Smith <ben@google.com>
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To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Google's mm problem - not reproduced on 2.4.13
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> So how much memory is mlocked?


In the 3.5G case, we lock 4 blocks (4 * 427683520 bytes, or 1.631M). 
There is code in the kernel that prevents more than 1/2 of all physical 
pages from being mlocked:

mlock.c:215-218: (in do_mlock)

	/* we may lock at most half of physical memory... */
	/* (this check is pretty bogus, but doesn't hurt) */
	if (locked > num_physpages/2)
		goto out;


For 2.2 we were have a patch that increases this to 90% or 60M, but we 
don't use this patch on 2.4 yet.


> Why _does_ this thing do mlock, anyway? What's the point? And how much
> does it try to lock?


Latency. We know exactly what data should remain in memory, so we're 
trying to prevent the vm from paging out the wrong data. It makes a huge 
difference in performance.
  - Ben

Ben Smith
Google, Inc.

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