From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261719AbVGZFDZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Jul 2005 01:03:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261708AbVGZFDY (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Jul 2005 01:03:24 -0400 Received: from shawidc-mo1.cg.shawcable.net ([24.71.223.10]:5295 "EHLO pd4mo2so.prod.shaw.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261720AbVGZFDK (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Jul 2005 01:03:10 -0400 Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 23:03:06 -0600 From: Robert Hancock Subject: Re: Kernel cached memory In-reply-to: <4tdIU-479-9@gated-at.bofh.it> To: linux-kernel Message-id: <42E5C40A.7000709@shaw.ca> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: en-us, en References: <4t5s8-68A-33@gated-at.bofh.it> <4tdIU-479-9@gated-at.bofh.it> User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org John Pearson wrote: > Wouldn't having (practically) all your memory used for cache slow down > starting a new program? First it would have to free up that space, and then > put stuff in that space, taking potentially twice as long. If the cache pages are clean (not been modified since they were read from the disk), then evicting that data will not take very long. If the program you are just starting is not in the cache, then the time taken to load it from disk will dwarf the time needed to evict cached pages. And there's also the possibility that the cache contains the data you are loading, which definitely will speed things up.. -- Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/