Re: [ck] swap prefetching merge plans

From: Radoslaw Szkodzinski
Date: Thu Mar 23 2006 - 10:36:24 EST


On Thursday 23 March 2006 08:04, Con Kolivas wrote yet:
> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 03:53 pm, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > A look at the -mm lineup for 2.6.17:
> >
> > mm-implement-swap-prefetching.patch
> > mm-implement-swap-prefetching-fix.patch
> > mm-implement-swap-prefetching-tweaks.patch
> >
> > Still don't have a compelling argument for this, IMO.
>
> For those users who feel they do have a compelling argument for it, please
> speak now or I'll end up maintaining this in -ck only forever. I've come
> to depend on it with my workloads now so I'm never dropping it. There's no
> point me explaining how it is useful yet again, though, because I just end
> up looking like I'm handwaving. It seems a shame for it not to be available
> to all linux users.
>

A compelling argument? Launch UT2004 and some applications in the background.
They'll get swapped out. Shock horror when you wait x seconds before system
gets responsive and applications are swapped in. (especially the new manual
option helps)

Same applies to any large compile. (KDE with --enable-final springs to mind,
but Firefox should also be large enough)
Even 0,5G of memory is not enough for those and a few apps.

Another boon is retaining swapped-out data.
Saves a lot of time when I keep large applications in background and only use
them sporadically. (OpenOffice springs to mind)

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