linux-kernel - Re: vm/fs meetup in september?

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Message-ID: <87bqexiwu3.wl%peter@chubb.wattle.id.au>
Date:	Sat, 30 Jun 2007 06:02:44 -0400
From:	peter@...bb.wattle.id.au
To:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Jared Hulbert <jaredeh@...il.com>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Memory Management List <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: vm/fs meetup in september?

>>>>> "Christoph" == Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org> writes:

Christoph> On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 10:07:24AM -0700, Jared Hulbert
Christoph> wrote:
>> If you have a large array of a non-volatile semi-writeable memory
>> such as a highspeed NOR Flash or some of the similar emerging
>> technologies in a system.  It would be useful to use that memory as
>> an extension of RAM.  One of the ways you could do that is allow
>> pages to be swapped out to this memory.  Once there these pages
>> could be read directly, but would require a COW procedure on a
>> write access.  The reason why I think this may be a vm/fs topic is
>> that the hardware makes writing to this memory efficiently a
>> non-trivial operation that requires management just like a
>> filesystem.  Also it seems to me that there are probably overlaps
>> between this topic and the recent filemap_xip.c discussions.

Christoph> So what you mean is "swap on flash" ?  Defintively sounds
Christoph> like an interesting topic, although I'm not too sure it's
Christoph> all that filesystem-related.


You need either a block translation layer, or a (swap) filesystem that
understands flash peculiarities in order to make such a thing work.
The standard Linux swap format will not work.

--
Dr Peter Chubb  http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au  peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au
http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au           ERTOS within National ICT Australia
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