Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 2 Aug 2002 02:22:51 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 2 Aug 2002 02:22:51 -0400 Received: from deimos.hpl.hp.com ([192.6.19.190]:14819 "EHLO deimos.hpl.hp.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 2 Aug 2002 02:22:50 -0400 From: David Mosberger MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15690.9727.831144.67179@napali.hpl.hp.com> Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 23:26:07 -0700 To: "David S. Miller" Cc: davidm@hpl.hp.com, davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com, gh@us.ibm.com, riel@conectiva.com.br, akpm@zip.com.au, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, rohit.seth@intel.com, sunil.saxena@intel.com, asit.k.mallick@intel.com Subject: Re: large page patch In-Reply-To: <20020801.222053.20302294.davem@redhat.com> References:

<15690.6005.624237.902152@napali.hpl.hp.com> <20020801.222053.20302294.davem@redhat.com> X-Mailer: VM 7.07 under Emacs 21.2.1 Reply-To: davidm@hpl.hp.com X-URL: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/David_Mosberger/ Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1439 Lines: 35 >>>>> On Thu, 01 Aug 2002 22:20:53 -0700 (PDT), "David S. Miller" said: DaveM> From: David Mosberger Date: DaveM> Thu, 1 Aug 2002 22:24:05 -0700 DaveM> In my opinion the proposed large-page patch addresses a DaveM> relatively pressing need for databases (primarily). DaveM> Databases want large pages with IPC_SHM, how can this DaveM> special syscal hack address that? I believe the interface is OK in that regard. AFAIK, Oracle is happy with it. DaveM> It's great for experimentation, but give up syscall slots DaveM> for this? I'm a bit concerned about this, too. My preference would have been to use the regular mmap() and shmat() syscalls with some augmentation/hint as to what the preferred page size is (Simon Winwood's OLS 2002 paper talks about some options here). I like this because hints could be useful even with a transparent superpage scheme. The original Intel patch did use more of a hint-like approach (the hint was a simple binary flag though: give me regular pages or give me large pages), but Linus preferred a separate syscall interface, so the Intel folks switched over to doing that. --david - 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/