forgot to mention another, 'much requested' Linux feature that has been
added/enabled by the new pagecache: now file writes can happen in
parallel, even at once (if on an SMP box).
Until 2.3.7 all file writes were serialized by the 'inode semaphore', ie.
one big write excluded all other writers until the big write finished.
With 2.3.7 file-writes are no more serialized with the inode semaphore.
(we have a per-page semaphore-alike lock that serializes multiple writes
to the same page, but reads can still happen in parallel even if the page
lock is held.)
-- mingo
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