linux-kernel - Re: Linux 2.6.29

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Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0903291354480.3994@localhost.localdomain>
Date:	Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:07:54 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
cc:	Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@...e.fr>,
	Matthew Garrett <mjg59@...f.ucam.org>,
	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	David Rees <drees76@...il.com>, Jesper Krogh <jesper@...gh.cc>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.29

On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> Yep and twenty years on software hasn´t improved

I really think you're gilding the edges of those old memories. The 
software 20 years ago wasn't that great. I'd say it was on the whole a 
whole lot crappier than it is today.

It's just that we have much higher expectations, and our problem sizes 
have grown a _lot_ faster than rotating disk latencies have improved. 
People didn't worry about having a hundred megs of dirty data and doing an 
'fsync' twenty years ago. Even on big hardware (if you _had_ a hundred 
megs of dirty data you didn't worry about latencies of a few seconds), 
never mind in the Linux world.

This particular problem really largely boils down to "average memory 
capacity has expanded a _lot_ more than harddisk speeds have gone up".

			Linus
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