Clayton - you have mostly understood the articles you have read. Whilst you understand the general principle of a paging system, clearly, you misunderstand that they are systematic, logical and non-optimal as with caching algorithms.
Clayton Macleod wrote:
MS themselves say that there is no way for us to know how much of any process is in RAM and how much is in the pagefile,
Really? Well that individual needs to be fired. You couldn't even become an MCSE without some basic knowledge of where to find this stuff. HERES SOME TOOLS: TASKLIST, TASKMGR, PMON from Systeminternals.com. The first two SHIP WITH WINDOWS! There are some more tools (IIRC) in the support folders of the install CD too (although I cant remember how much sysint stuff is still being shipped with 2003).
so, I don't know where you're getting this information from.
Exactly, this should suggest another inference that should be made. How much do you really KNOW about this? Please don't waste time.
Besides, *everything* is in virtual memory.
Everything uses the kernels addressing system, this much is true.
And there is no point in keeping pages in RAM that aren't being accessed when that RAM could be actively used for some other purpose.
I'd agree with that statement, well I do, but don't forget this discussion is about excess FREE memory, not efficiency of use of ram vs. pagefile. > If pages are active, they'll be in RAM, don't worry
about it.
Define an active page? How long before it should be moved out of physical RAM? 100ms? 2 years? If you could define this accurately, you could get rich. That's the whole point - these systems are not optimal yet - they are good, but not optimal. Currently MS build very very dynamic (read: adaptive loopback system) caching algorithms, in fact, there is no other OS currently available which is as sophisticated in this regard. I would recommend you never say the above statement again, as it's simply not held true by the systems that really exist, they do try though. My next questions to you are: (although this is really rhetorical as I know the answers) - If a page is "inactive" and therefore stored in the pagefile and becomes "active" what is the process by which the page is loaded? What is the decision for which pages to move out of ram? What data is used to make the decision? How long does it take? What is the impact on the process scheduler? Does this create a temporary starvation issue? _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
