Re: [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC] Towards Unified and Extensible Memory Reclaim (reclaim_ext)

Matthew Wilcox
2026-03-27T03:44:24Z

On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 01:47:43PM -0700, Axel Rasmussen wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 1:30 PM Gregory Price <gourry@gourry.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 01:02:02PM -0700, Axel Rasmussen wrote:
> > >
> > > I think one thing we all agree on at least is, long term, there isn't
> > > really a good argument for having > 1 LRU implementation. E.g., we
> > > don't believe there are just irreconcilable differences, where one
> > > impl is better for some workloads, and another is better for others,
> > > and there is no way the two can be converged.
> > >
> >
> > I absolutely believe there are irreconcilable differences - but not in
> > the sense that one is better or worse, but in the sense that features
> > from one cannot work in the other.
>
> Right, agreed. I mean a case where we have workloads A and B, such
> that there does not exist an implementation that can serve both well.
> If such workloads were "common" to me that would justify a reclaim_ops
> / pluggable abstraction layer. My thesis is that they are "not
> common", so I'm a bit skeptical the abstraction is worth it.

That isn't what Tal was telling me at Plumbers. Adding him to cc so
he can dispute you in his own words, rather than my clumsy paraphrasing
of what he said.