Re: [patch 00/14] Page cache cleanup in anticipation of Large Blocksize support

Dave Kleikamp
2007-06-15T15:06:21Z

On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 15:04 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:37:33 -0700 (PDT) Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:
> >
> > > We want the 100% case.
> >
> > Yes that is what we intend to do. Universal support for larger blocksize.
> > I.e. your desktop filesystem will use 64k page size and server platforms
> > likely much larger.
>
> With 64k pagesize the amount of memory required to hold a kernel tree (say)
> will go from 270MB to 1400MB. This is not an optimisation.
>
> Several 64k pagesize people have already spent time looking at various
> tail-packing schemes to get around this serious problem. And that's on
> _server_ class machines. Large ones. I don't think
> laptop/desktop/samll-server machines would want to go anywhere near this.

I'm one of the ones investigating 64 KB pagesize tail-packing schemes,
and I believe Christoph's cleanups will reduce the intrusiveness and
improve the readability of a tail-packing solution. I'll add my vote in
support of these patches.

Thanks,
Shaggy
--
David Kleikamp
IBM Linux Technology Center