Re: Path forward for Virtualized Swap?

[Baoquan He <baoquan.he@linux.dev>]

On 09/23/26 at 02:52pm, Klara Modin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2026-09-22 21:10:53 -1000, Chris Li wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 5:53 AM Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2026-09-22 at 05:43 -1000, Chris Li wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 5:20 AM Gregory Price <gourry@gourry.net>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 03:32:44AM -1000, Chris Li wrote:
> > > > > > > Right now it has 64GB of memory.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > That is exactly my point. You are running 1/8 = 12.5% system ram.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Chris you are missing the point
> > > > >
> > > > > Zswap:           8812236 kB
> > > > > Zswapped:       24927876 kB
> > > >
> > > > I am well aware of the point. The 7%-10% data I provided is before
> > > > compression. After compression, the real saving is about 1.5% - 2%.
> > > >
> > > Here I'm at 28% without any issues, with room for
> > > more.
> > 
> > 28% is one thing, 100% is a difference beast completely. If you
> > haven't tried it, don't assume 100% will behave the same as 28%. There
> > is a point where too much zswap makes the system unusable. It is hard
> > to pinpoint the exact upper boundary. However, figuring out the upper
> > bound larger than that exact boundary is not hard at all. I haven't
> > seen any one can use 100% system RAM sized memory swap out to zswap.
> > If you have a data point showing what that system with 100% swap to
> > zswap looks like, please share it.
> > 
> 
> Chiming in as more of a user perspective.
> 
> On my 4 GiB BPI-F3, I can reach more than 10:1 compression ratio on
> zswap during some parts when building GCC 17 snapshots. E.g:
> 
> MemTotal:        3966864 kB
> SwapCached:        31872 kB
> SwapTotal:      16777212 kB
> SwapFree:       16638128 kB
> Zswap:            280140 kB
> Zswapped:        2859840 kB
> AnonPages:       2927376 kB
> AnonHugePages:   1409024 kB
> 
> While this is 72 % rather than the 100 % you asked for, I think this
> shows that what size a potential limit on the uncompressed size of zswap
> is suitable heavily depends on the workload.
> 
> I have been using vswap consistently on all my machines since about
> August, and I have also tried one or two versions of xswap (but the
> current lack of writeback makes it inconvenient for me). I really

Thanks for testing xswap and reporting issue on xswap rfc v3.

xswap has writeback now. I only built foundation for xswap, while
writeback part was left to other people for collaboration. Finally
I added it.

[RFC PATCH 00/17] mm, swap: xswap writeback to a physical backend
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260920072043.430390-1-hebaoquan@kylinos.cn/T/#u


> appreciate the work being put in to decouple zswap from needing a
> physical swap device to work.
> 
> > >
> > > > You are not listening. The boundary was set due to feedback from the
> > > > application SLO. Those are real deployments not imaginary usage.
> > > > Please respect the user.
> > > >
> > > Different users need different things.
> > >
> > > The kernel needs to be able to accommodate all of them.
> > >
> > > The kernel default should accommodate the people who
> > > are least capable of configuring their systems.
> > >
> > > Hyperscalers can set their own defaults across their
> > > fleets. They know how to adjust settings.
> > 
> > They can use a safe value, e.g., 100% of RAM. Let the people who know
> > exactly what they want to swap configure the boundary they want.
> 
> My personal preference would be for a default uncapped (or very high,
> and I don't think 100 % of RAM is high) limit on the uncompressed data
> which is backed by zswap, since that would mean one less knob to tune.
> 
> > 
> > Chris
> 
> Regards,
> Klara Modin