From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263332AbTDGIPP (for ); Mon, 7 Apr 2003 04:15:15 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263328AbTDGIPP (for ); Mon, 7 Apr 2003 04:15:15 -0400 Received: from rumms.uni-mannheim.de ([134.155.50.52]:14572 "EHLO rumms.uni-mannheim.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263332AbTDGIPN (for ); Mon, 7 Apr 2003 04:15:13 -0400 From: Thomas Schlichter To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: An idea for prefetching swapped memory... Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 10:26:43 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1; boundary="Boundary-02=_HZTk+Okv0Bi9LLP"; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200304071026.47557.schlicht@uni-mannheim.de> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org --Boundary-02=_HZTk+Okv0Bi9LLP Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Description: signed data Content-Disposition: inline Hello, some days ago some friends and me argued about a feature which seems not to= be=20 included in current OSs but could improve useability mainly for desktop=20 computers. The idea was about prefetching swapped out pages when some memory is free, = the=20 CPU is idle and the I/O load is low. So this should not 'cost' much but behave better on following situation: (I think there are even more such situations, this one should just be an=20 example) One is surfing the internet and having some browser windows opened. Now,=20 without closing the browser windows, he is playing some game which needs=20 pretty much memory so the browsers memory is getting swapped out. After=20 finishing gaming he's going to make some coffee and then surfing the intern= et=20 again. But even if the computer was IDLE for a time and, as the game was closed=20 again, some memory is really FREE, the pages for the browser are swapped in= =20 just when they are needed and not in advance. With this feature there should be no performance decrease because only free= =20 resources would be used, and if pages were swapped in but not be used, they= =20 stay not dirty and so have not to be written to disk when they are swapped= =20 out again. But the improvements should be obvious if simply the last swaped= =20 out pages are swapped in again... If somebody could give me a hint how to implement this I would try it. I ho= pe=20 it will not be very difficult... ;-) Thank you for reading and perhaps thinking about it... Best regards Thomas Schlichter --Boundary-02=_HZTk+Okv0Bi9LLP Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Description: signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQA+kTZHYAiN+WRIZzQRAmfLAJ9weSjhvGgQLmNICs4LRqySsm5wUQCgg63N NzrXXo/U1tmlhaAjd8MB2LA= =cLak -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Boundary-02=_HZTk+Okv0Bi9LLP--