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Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:46:41 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>,
        KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>, Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
        linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/8] Use memory compaction instead of lumpy reclaim
 during high-order allocations
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On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:22:41 +0000
Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> wrote:

> Huge page allocations are not expected to be cheap but lumpy reclaim
> is still very disruptive.

Huge pages are boring.  Can we expect any benefit for the
stupid-nic-driver-which-does-order-4-GFP_ATOMIC-allocations problem?

>
> ...
>
> I haven't pushed hard on the concept of lumpy compaction yet and right
> now I don't intend to during this cycle. The initial prototypes did not
> behave as well as expected and this series improves the current situation
> a lot without introducing new algorithms. Hence, I'd like this series to
> be considered for merging.

Translation: "Andrew, wait for the next version"? :)

> I'm hoping that this series also removes the
> necessity for the "delete lumpy reclaim" patch from the THP tree.

Now I'm sad.  I read all that and was thinking "oh goody, we get to
delete something for once".  But no :(

If you can get this stuff to work nicely, why can't we remove lumpy
reclaim?