Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 4 Nov 1998 07:22:45 +0100 (CET) | From | Rik van Riel <> | Subject | Re: high-end vs. low end [was: Linux vs. FreeBSD] |
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On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Sasi Peter wrote:
> > how to better scale towards the very high end, > > we will want to solidify those before 2.3 is started) > > Alas, I think, kernel developers should neither forget about > so-called low-end systems, like 32M ram P66 or 5x86.
We won't, but the current algorithms are mostly based on the assumption that CPU is plentyfull and I/O is expensive.
This breaks horrendously on very lange boxes, where system overheads of 40-50% are common.
We'll have to assume that both CPU and I/O are expensive. This will mean that the selection code for pageouts will get somewhat simpler. The negative effects of that can be offset by doing better I/O clustering and swapin readahead.
> Don't forget, the point is, that linux makes a perfect Xterminal of > a 386 with 8M ram (and should further versions do so too).
It probably will. It might even work better :)
> How far did 2.1.x kernels got in self-fine-tuning mem/swap/buffer/etc. > parameters to fit a certain mem/proc./architecture config they are run on? > Could it be improved by eg. some serious surveys on how a config performs > with different parameters?
I don't know, but since I'm working on a performance tuning document anyway, I might just as well ask folks to do some tuning themselves and report 'dangerous' and extremely-good settings to me.
Rik -- typing slowly because my kbd is dvorak since sun 19:40... +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Linux memory management tour guide. H.H.vanRiel@phys.uu.nl | | Scouting Vries cubscout leader. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
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