Hi Vivek, Sorry it made such a big confusion to you. I hope Peter's 3rd order polynomial abstraction in v9 can clarify the concepts a lot. As for the old global control line origin - dirty pos_ratio = -------------- (1) origin - goal where origin = 4 * thresh (2) effectively decides the slope of the line. The use of @limit in code origin = max(4 * thresh, limit) (3) is merely to safeguard the rare case that (2) might result in negative pos_ratio in (1). I have another patch to add a "brake" area immediately below @limit that will scale pos_ratio down to 0. However that's no longer necessary with the 3rd order polynomial solution. Note that @limit will normally be equal to @thresh except in the rare case that @thresh is suddenly knocked down and @limit is taking time to follow it. Thanks, Fengguang > Hi Fengguang, > > Ok, so just trying to understand this pos_ratio little better. > > You have following basic formula. > > origin - dirty > pos_ratio = -------------- > origin - goal > > Terminology is very confusing and following is my understanding. > > - setpoint == goal > > setpoint is the point where we would like our number of dirty pages to > be and at this point pos_ratio = 1. For global dirty this number seems > to be (thresh - thresh / DIRTY_SCOPE) > > - thresh > dirty page threshold calculated from dirty_ratio (Certain percentage of > total memory). > > - Origin (seems to be equivalent of limit) > > This seems to be the reference point/limit we don't want to cross and > distance from this limit basically decides the pos_ratio. Closer we > are to limit, lower the pos_ratio and further we are higher the > pos_ratio. > > So threshold is just a number which helps us determine goal and limit. > > goal = thresh - thresh / DIRTY_SCOPE > limit = 4*thresh > > So goal is where we want to be and we start throttling the task more as > we move away goal and approach limit. We keep the limit high enough > so that (origin-dirty) does not become negative entity. > > So we do expect to cross "thresh" otherwise thresh itself could have > served as limit? > > If my understanding is right, then can we get rid of terms "setpoint" and > "origin". Would it be easier to understand the things if we just talk > in terms of "goal" and "limit" and how these are derived from "thresh". > > thresh == soft limit > limit == 4*thresh (hard limit) > goal = thresh - thresh / DIRTY_SCOPE (where we want system to > be in steady state). > limit - dirty > pos_ratio = -------------- > limit - goal > > Thanks > Vivek -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>