linux-kernel - RE: swap on eMMC and other flash

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Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1204020754180.1847@eggly.anvils>
Date:	Mon, 2 Apr 2012 07:58:35 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>
To:	"Luca Porzio (lporzio)" <lporzio@...ron.com>
cc:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	"linaro-kernel@...ts.linaro.org" <linaro-kernel@...ts.linaro.org>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Alex Lemberg <alex.lemberg@...disk.com>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Saugata Das <saugata.das@...aro.org>,
	Venkatraman S <venkat@...aro.org>,
	Yejin Moon <yejin.moon@...sung.com>,
	Hyojin Jeong <syr.jeong@...sung.com>,
	"linux-mmc@...r.kernel.org" <linux-mmc@...r.kernel.org>,
	"kernel-team@...roid.com" <kernel-team@...roid.com>
Subject: RE: swap on eMMC and other flash

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Luca Porzio (lporzio) wrote:
> 
> Great topics. As per one of Rik original points:
> 
> > 4) skip writeout of zero-filled pages - this can be a big help
> >     for KVM virtual machines running Windows, since Windows zeroes
> >     out free pages;   simply discarding a zero-filled page is not
> >     at all simple in the current VM, where we would have to iterate
> >     over all the ptes to free the swap entry before being able to
> >     free the swap cache page (I am not sure how that locking would
> >     even work)
> > 
> >     with the extra layer of indirection, the locking for this scheme
> >     can be trivial - either the faulting process gets the old page,
> >     or it gets a new one, either way it'll be zero filled
> > 
> 
> Since it's KVMs realm here, can't KSM simply solve the zero-filled pages problem avoiding unnecessary burden for the Swap subsystem?

I would expect that KSM already does largely handle this, yes.
But it's also quite possible that I'm missing Rik's point.

Hugh
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