From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261361AbVGXV3N (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:29:13 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261376AbVGXV3N (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:29:13 -0400 Received: from 41-052.adsl.zetnet.co.uk ([194.247.41.52]:14350 "EHLO mail.esperi.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261361AbVGXV3J (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:29:09 -0400 To: VASM Cc: Jesper Juhl , gbakos@cfa.harvard.edu, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: kernel page size explanation References: <9a87484905072118207a85970e@mail.gmail.com> <87d5p8aw4h.fsf@amaterasu.srvr.nix> <4536bb7305072412011fbeaf59@mail.gmail.com> From: Nix X-Emacs: Lovecraft was an optimist. Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 22:28:59 +0100 In-Reply-To: <4536bb7305072412011fbeaf59@mail.gmail.com> (VASM's message of "Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:31:07 +0530") Message-ID: <878xzvc2qs.fsf@amaterasu.srvr.nix> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) XEmacs/21.4 (Corporate Culture, linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 25 Jul 2005, VASM wrote: > i had one question > does the linux kernel support only one default page size even if the > processor on which it is working supports multiple ? No. Some architectures have compile-time support for multiple different page sizes (e.g. Itanium, SPARC64); many have support for a (non-swappable) `large pages) system, and a filesystem backed by huge pages. (Often, the kernel is stored in huge pages, to keep the number of page table entries wasted by the nonswappable kernel to a minimum.) What is *not* presently supported is using multiple page sizes to back userspace processes; that size is currently fixed at compile-time, even on architectures supporting multiple variably-sized pages. -- `But of course, GR is the very best relativity for the masses.' --- Wayne Throop