Disabling Page caching

Michael Taht (mike@icanect.net)
Wed, 2 Apr 1997 12:14:56 -0500 (EST)


Back when I read a 486 hardware manual from end to end I noticed
that there was a page-table option to disable caching of a given
page or range of pages. I presume this option is still available
for later Intel CPUs. Since copying disk pages is typically a big one-way
operation with direct interface to userspace or disk controller, would
disabling cache on these pages improve performance by reducing HW cache
thrashing?