Re: [RFC] Arch option to touch newly allocated pages

Alan Cox
2002-03-04T22:35:46Z

> OK, when something calls alloc_pages and gets back some pages, it's almost
> always going to modify them immediately, right?

Yes. Which is why we don't allocate the when you map an object or create
a shmem fs file

> If this is true, then what I'm proposing would force the host to find backing
> memory for those pages a tiny bit earlier than it would have had to otherwise.

In the normal case about half of the pages are never allocated that are
mapped. In other words no alloc_pages was ever done for them or will ever
be needed.