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On 28/08/2022 15:21, Rich Freeman wrote: |
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> Something I wish linux supported was discardable memory, for |
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> caches/etc. A program should be able to allocate memory while passing |
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> a hint to the kernel saying that the memory is discardable. |
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Linux DOES have that ... |
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I'm not sure how to use it, but you can pass a flag to open(), which |
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says "do not cache this file". The obvious use case is something like |
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cp, but there's plenty of others. Or there are applications which cache |
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stuff in the app, so don't want to waste OS cache as well - databases |
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are a prime example. |
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Apparently not only does memory use crash when this is actively used, |
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but because the OS does not have to manage cache, speed is actually |
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noticeably impacted. Given the obsession kernel devs have with not |
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wasting memory and time, this is likely to be actively maintained and |
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supported. We just need to find out how to access this from user space. |
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Cheers, |
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Wol |
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