On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 18:12 -0500, Todd Denniston wrote: > Patrick O'Callaghan wrote, On 01/22/2009 05:20 PM: > > On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 08:57 -0600, Aaron Konstam wrote: > >> On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 12:39 +0000, Alan Cox wrote: > >>> On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:49:34 -0800 (PST) > >>> Leslie Satenstein <lsatenstein@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >>> > >>>> Regarding swap files and intel architectures. I believe swapping is not by pages, but by segment sizes, which is gruesome, because of performance. > >>> Linux always pages - it doesn't use intel segmentation - in fact nobody > >>> post 286 era does. > >>> > >> Well now that I committed myself , I have question for you Alan,, > >> because I know you know the real answer. > >> > >> > >> Normally, when we talk about VM OSs we discuss a memory space and an > >> address space. VM is supposed to be mapping pages or segments from the > >> address space to the memory space and reverse. I was surprised at your > >> saying that segmentation is not being used in Linux. If it is paging > >> that is being used where is the address space that the pages reside in. > > > > In the memory layout of a process we talk about the code, data and stack > > segments, because in the original PDP-11 architecture a segmentation > > model was easier to manage than a paging model (the machine could only > > have 8 "pages" in each segment, so there wasn't much point). This use of > > the terminology persists today. However as Alan said every modern > > machine supports paging so in practice that's what's really happening. > > It's convenient to keep the segment terminology because there are > > *logical* differences between the three segments, which the kernel uses > > in its memory management policy. > > > > The term "swap" is also a holdback from even before the segmentation > > days, since entire processes would be moved (roll-in/roll-out). When > > Unix used a segmented model segments were moved instead of whole > > processes, but it was still called swapping, and the term "swap space" > > persists even when it's used for paging. > > > > As if you weren't confused enough :-) > > > > poc > > All this avoids the question I asked. VM processing involves paging between a memory space and an address space. The question is where is the address space of the process? It can't be the computer's real memory because that would be the memory space. > > If Aaron is not confused enough, then may I suggest looking over at Ulrich > Drepper's paper on LWN > What every programmer should know about memory, > Part 1 (Introduction & Commodity Hardware Today) > http://lwn.net/Articles/250967/ > At the bottom of the Part 1 article there are links to the other parts. > * Part 2 (CPU caches) > * Part 3 (Virtual memory) http://lwn.net/Articles/253361/ > * Part 4 (NUMA systems) > * Part 5 (What programmers can do - cache optimization) > * Part 6 (What programmers can do - multi-threaded optimizations) > * Part 7 (Memory performance tools) > * Part 8 (Future technologies) > * Part 9 (Appendices and bibliography) > > > -- > Todd Denniston > Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC Crane) > Harnessing the Power of Technology for the Warfighter > -- ======================================================================= "The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment." -- Richard P. Feynman ======================================================================= Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
