On (05/12/06 12:01), Christoph Lameter didst pronounce:
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> > > We always run reclaim against the whole zone not against parts. Why
> > > would we start running reclaim against a portion of a zone?
> >
> > Oh for gawd's sake.
>
> Yes indeed. Another failure to answer a simple question.
>
There are times you want to reclaim just part of a zone - specifically
satisfying a high-order allocations. See sitations 1 and 2 from elsewhere
in this thread. On a similar vein, there will be times when you want to
migrate a PFN range for similar reasons.
> > If you want to allocate a page from within the first 1/4 of a zone, and if
> > all those pages are in use for something else then you'll need to run
> > reclaim against the first 1/4 of that zone. Or fail the allocation. Or
> > run reclaim against the entire zone. The second two options are
> > self-evidently dumb.
>
> Why would one want to allocate from the 1/4th of a zone? (Are we still
> discussing Mel's antifrag scheme or what is this about?)
>
Because you wanted contiguous blocks of pages. This is related to anti-frag
because with anti-frag, reclaiming memory or migration memory will free up
contiguous blocks. Without it, you're probably wasting your time.
--
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick IBM Dublin Software Lab
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