From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755845AbXD0Nue (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:50:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755846AbXD0Nue (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:50:34 -0400 Received: from holomorphy.com ([66.93.40.71]:42170 "EHLO holomorphy.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755845AbXD0Ntw (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:49:52 -0400 Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:44:51 -0700 From: William Lee Irwin III To: Andrew Morton Cc: Christoph Lameter , David Chinner , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Mel Gorman , Jens Axboe , Badari Pulavarty , Maxim Levitsky Subject: Re: [00/17] Large Blocksize Support V3 Message-ID: <20070427134451.GP19966@holomorphy.com> References: <20070424222105.883597089@sgi.com> <20070426190438.3a856220.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070427022731.GF65285596@melbourne.sgi.com> <20070426195357.597ffd7e.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070427042046.GI65285596@melbourne.sgi.com> <20070426221528.655d79cb.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070426235542.bad7035a.akpm@linux-foundation.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070426235542.bad7035a.akpm@linux-foundation.org> Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 11:55:42PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > Please address my point: if in five years time x86 has larger or varible > pagesize, this code will be a permanent millstone around our necks which we > *should not have merged*. > And if in five years time x86 does not have larger pagesize support then > the manufacturers would have decided that 4k pages are not a performance > problem, so we again should not have merged this code. So the verdict is wait 5 years, see if x86 did anything, and so on. Has anyone else noticed our embedded arch installed base dwarfs our x86 and "enterprise" installed bases combined? What are our priorities that make designing the core around x86 meaningful again? Pipe dreams of competing with Windows on the desktop? Optimizing for kernel compiles on kernel hackers' workstations? Something should seriously be reevaluated there at some point. As x86 is now the priority regardless, maybe checking in with Intel and AMD as far as what they'd like to see happen would be enlightening. It may be that some things are deadlocked on OS use cases. Also, is there something in particular that should be done for the case of x86 acquiring a variable pagesize? -- wli