Message-ID: <4D52D091.1000504@vflare.org>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:36:17 -0500
From: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
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To: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com>
CC: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>, gregkh@suse.de,
        Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>, akpm@linux-foundation.org,
        torvalds@linux-foundation.org, matthew@wil.cx,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, jeremy@goop.org,
        Kurt Hackel <kurt.hackel@oracle.com>, npiggin@kernel.dk,
        riel@redhat.com, Konrad Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>, mel@csn.ul.ie,
        kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com, sfr@canb.auug.org.au,
        wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn, tytso@mit.edu, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk,
        hughd@google.com, hannes@cmpxchg.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH V2 2/3] drivers/staging: zcache: host services and PAM
 services
References: <AANLkTi=CEXiOdqPZgQZmQwatHqZ_nsnmnVhwpdt=7q3f@mail.gmail.com> <0d1aa13e-be1f-4e21-adf2-f0162c67ede3@default AANLkTimm8o6FnDon=eMTepDaoViU9tjteAYE9kmJhMsx@mail.gmail.com> <5c529b08-cf36-43c7-b368-f3f602faf358@default>
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On 02/09/2011 11:39 AM, Dan Magenheimer wrote:
>
>
>> From: Minchan Kim [mailto:minchan.kim@gmail.com]
>
>> As I read your comment, I can't find the benefit of zram compared to
>> frontswap.
>
> Well, I am biased, but I agree that frontswap is a better technical
> solution than zram. ;-)  But "dynamic-ity" is very important to
> me and may be less important to others.
>


I agree that frontswap is better than zram when considering swap as the 
use case - no bio overhead, dynamic resizing. However, zram being a 
*generic* block-device has some unique cases too like hosting files on 
/tmp, various caches under /var or any place where a compressed 
in-memory block device can help.

So, frontswap and zram have overlapping use case of swap but are not the 
same.

Thanks,
Nitin
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