Re: cache limit

["Ihar 'Philips' Filipau" <filia@softhome.net>]

Mike Fedyk wrote:
> 
> That was because they wanted the non-streaming files to be left in the cache.
> 
>>  I will try to produce some benchmarktings tomorrow with different 
>>'mem=%dMB'. I'm afraid to confirm that it will make difference.
>>  But in advance: mantainance of page tables for 1GB and for 128MB of 
>>RAM are going to make a difference.
> 
> I'm sorry to say, but you *will* get lower performance if you lower the mem=
> value below your working set.  This will also lower the total amount of
> memory available for your applications, and force your apps, to swap and
> balance cache, and app memory.
> 
> That's not what you are looking to benchmark.
> 

   Okay. I'm completely puzzled.
   I will qute here only one test - and I really do not understand this 
stuff.

   Three boots with the same parameters and only mem=nMB, n = 
{512,256,128} (I have 512MB RAM)

   hdparm tests:
[root@hera ifilipau]# hdparm -t /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.56 seconds = 41.03 MB/sec
[root@hera ifilipau]# hdparm -T /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.44 seconds =290.91 MB/sec
[root@hera ifilipau]#

   Before tests I was doing 'swapoff -a; sync'
   RedHat's 2.4.20-20.9 kernel.

   What has really puzzled me.
   Operation: "cat *.bz2 >big_file", where *.bz2 is just two bzipped 
kernels. Total size: 29MB+32MB (2.4.22 + 2.6.0-test1)

   To be bsolutely fair in this unfair benchmark I have run test only 
once. Times in seconds as shown by bash's time.

            cat      sync
   512MB:  1.565    0.007
   256MB:  1.649    0.008
   128MB:  2.184    0.007

   Kill me - shoot me, but how it can be?
   Resulting file fits RAM.
   Not hard to guess that source files, which no one cares about already 
- are still hanging in the RAM...

   That's not right: as long as resulting file fits memory - and it fits 
memory in all (512MB, 256MB, 128MB) cases - this operation should take 
the _same_ time. (Actually before 128MB test, vmstat was saying that I 
have +70MB of free non-touched memory)

   So resume is quite simple: kernel loses *terribly* much time 
resorting read()s against write()s. Way _too_ _much_ time.

   I will try to download RedHat's AS kernel and play with page-cache.
   After all: if RH has included that feature in their kernels - that 
means it really make sense ;-)))

-- 
Ihar 'Philips' Filipau  / with best regards from Saarbruecken.
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