From: Daniel Phillips <phillips@phunq.net>
To: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Tux3] Tux3 report: Tux3 Git tree available
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:08:52 -0700
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Cc: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
       tux3@tux3.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <200903110925.37614.phillips@phunq.net> <200903142024.30142.phillips@phunq.net> <200903151450.51726.nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
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On Saturday 14 March 2009, Nick Piggin wrote:
> On Sunday 15 March 2009 14:24:29 Daniel Phillips wrote:
> > I expect implementing VM extents to be a brutally complex project, as
> > filesystem extents always turn out to be, even though one tends to
> > enter such projects thinking, how hard could this be?  Answer: harder
> > than you think.  But VM extents would be good for a modest speedup, so
> > somebody is sure to get brave enough to try it sometime.
> 
> I don't think there is enough evidence to be able to make such an
> assertion.
> 
> When you actually implement extent splitting and merging in a deadlock
> free manner and synchronize everything properly I wouldn't be surprised
> if it is slower most of the time. If it was significantly faster, then
> memory fragmentation means that it is going to get significantly slower
> over the uptime of the kernel, so you would have to virtually map the
> kernel and implement memory defragmentation, at which point you get even
> slower and more complex.

You can make exactly the same argument about filesystem extents, and
we know that extents are faster there.  So what is the fundamental
difference?

Regards,

Daniel
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