Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 9 Aug 2002 13:10:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 9 Aug 2002 13:10:21 -0400 Received: from dsl-213-023-043-103.arcor-ip.net ([213.23.43.103]:49293 "EHLO starship") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 9 Aug 2002 13:10:20 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Daniel Phillips To: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 19:11:56 +0200 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3.2] Cc: frankeh@watson.ibm.com, , David Mosberger , "David S. Miller" , , , , References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Message-Id: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1250 Lines: 28 On Friday 09 August 2002 18:51, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote: > > Slab allocations would not have GFP_DEFRAG (I mistakenly wrote GFP_LARGE > > earlier) and so would be allocated outside ZONE_LARGE. > > .. at which poin tyou then get zone balancing problems. > > Or we end up with the same kind of special zone that we have _anyway_ in > the current large-page patch, in which case the point of doing this is > what? The current large-page patch doesn't have any kind of defragmentation in the special zone and that memory is just not available for other uses. The thing is, when demand for large pages is low the zone should be allowed to fragment. All of highmem also qualifies as defraggable memory, so certainly on these big memory machines we can easily get a majority of memory in large pages. I don't see a fundamental reason for new zone balancing problems. The fact that balancing has sucked by tradition is not a fundamental reason ;-) -- Daniel - 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/