Re: [RFC] VM: I have a dream...

From: Alan Cox
Date: Thu Feb 02 2006 - 10:08:26 EST


On Maw, 2006-01-31 at 18:56 +0300, Al Boldi wrote:
> So with 64bits widely available now, and to let Linux spread its wings and
> really fly, how could tmpfs merged w/ swap be tweaked to provide direct
> mapped access into this linear address space?

Why bother. You can already create a private large file and mmap it if
you want to do this, and you will get better performance than being
smeared around swap with everyone else.

Currently swap means your data is mixed in with other stuff. Swap could
do preallocation of each vma when running in limited overcommit modes
and it would run a lot faster if you did but you would pay a lot in
flexibility and efficiency, as well as needing a lot more swap.

Far better to let applications wanting to work this way do it
themselves. Just mmap and the cache balancing and pager will do the rest
for you.

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