On large memory systems, the VM can spend way too much time scanning through pages that it cannot (or should not) evict from memory. Not only does it use up CPU time, but it also provokes lock contention and can leave large systems under memory presure in a catatonic state.
This patch series improves VM scalability by: 1) making the locking a little more scalable 2) putting filesystem backed, swap backed and non-reclaimable pages onto their own LRUs, so the system only scans the pages that it can/should evict from memory 3) switching to SEQ replacement for the anonymous LRUs, so the number of pages that need to be scanned when the system starts swapping is bound to a reasonable number The noreclaim patches come verbatim from Lee Schermerhorn and Nick Piggin. I have not taken a detailed look at them yet and all I have done is fix the rejects against the latest -mm kernel. I am posting this series now because I would like to get more feedback, while I am studying and improving the noreclaim patches myself. -- All Rights Reversed -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/