From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 21:30:50 +0200 (CEST) From: Ingo Molnar Reply-To: mingo@elte.hu Subject: Re: [patch] VM stable again? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Rik van Riel Cc: "Stephen C. Tweedie" , Linus Torvalds , linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Mon, 15 May 2000, Rik van Riel wrote: > I've thought about this but it doesn't seem worth the extra complexity > to me. Just making sure that while our task is freeing pages nobody > else will grab those pages without having also freed some pages seems > to be enough to me. actually wouldnt it be simpler to always call try_to_free_pages() when the zone is low on memory? This will keep the pressure on the system to recover from the low memory situation, and it reuses the low_on_memory flag. The new free_before_allocate flag is a 'now we are really low on memory' flag. > Furthermore, the "SMP locality" you talk about will probably be > completely overshadowed by the non-locality of the VM freeing code > anyway... But it would be a performance optimization for sure, a __free_pages() + __alloc_pages() is saved - this can make a big difference if (a mostly clean) pagecache is shrunk. Ingo -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux.eu.org/Linux-MM/