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* Re: i686 SMP systems with more then 12 GB ram with 2.4.x kernel ?
@ 2001-12-29 19:25 Dieter Nützel
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: Dieter Nützel @ 2001-12-29 19:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Harald Holzer; +Cc: Alan Cox, Andrea Arcangeli, Linux Kernel List

On Saturday, 29. December 2001 18:45, Alan cox wrote:
> > Are there some i686 SMP systems with more then 12 GB ram out there ?
>
> Very very few.
>
> > Is there a known problem with 2.4.x kernel and such systems ?
>
> Several 8)
>
> Hardware limits:
>         -       36bit addressing mode on x86 processors is slower
>         -       Many device drivers cant handle > 32bit DMA
>         -       The CPU can't efficiently map all that memory at once
>
> Software:
>         -       The block I/O layer doesn't cleanly handle large systems
>         -       The page struct is too big which puts undo loads on the
>                 memory that the CPU can map
>         -       We don't discard page tables when we can and should
>         -       We should probably switch to a larger virtual page size
>                 on big machines.
>
> The ones that actually bite hard are the block I/O layer and the page
> struct size. Making the block layer handle its part well is a 2.5 thing.
>
> > It looks like as the buffer_heads would fill the low memory up,
> > whether there is sufficient memory available or not, as long as
> > there is sufficient high memory for caching.
>
> That may well be happening. The Red Hat supplied 7.2 and 7.2 errata kernels
> were tested on 8Gb, I don't know what else larger.
>
> Because much of the memory cannot be used for kernel objects there is an
> imbalance in available resources and its very hard to balance them sanely.
> I'm not sure how many 8Gb+ machines Andrea has handy to tune the VM on
> either.

I think Andrea has access to some. Maybe SAP?

Have you tried with 2.4.17rc2aa2?
ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.17rc2aa2.bz2

The 10_vm-21 part applies clean to 2.4.17 (final), too.
I have it running without a glitch. But sadly a way smaller (much smaller) 
system...;-)

Regards,
	Dieter

-- 
Dieter Nützel
Graduate Student, Computer Science

University of Hamburg
Department of Computer Science
@home: Dieter.Nuetzel@hamburg.de

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread
* Re: i686 SMP systems with more then 12 GB ram with 2.4.x kernel ?
@ 2002-01-06 18:39 Daniel Freedman
  2002-01-06 18:59 ` Marvin Justice
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 37+ messages in thread
From: Daniel Freedman @ 2002-01-06 18:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-kernel


On Jan 01 2002, H. Peter Anvin (hpa@zytor.com) wrote:
> By author: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> >
> > > 2. Isn't the boundary at 2^30 really irrelevant and the three "correct"
> > > zones are (0 - 2^24-1), (2^24 - 2^32-1) and (2^32 - 2^36-1)?
> >
> > Nope. The limit for directly mapped memory is 2^30.
> >
> 
> 2^30-2^27 to be exact (assuming a 3:1 split and 128MB vmalloc zone.)
> 
>         -hpa

For my better understanding, where's the 128MB vmalloc zone assumption
defined, please?

I'm pretty sure I understand that the 3:1 split you refer to is
defined by PAGE_OFFSET in asm-i386/page.h

But when I tried to find the answer in the source for the vmalloc
zone, I looked in linux/mm.h, linux/mmzone.h, linux/vmalloc.h, and
mm/vmalloc.c, but couldn't find anything there or in O'Reilly's kernel
book that I could follow/understand.

Thanks for any pointers.

Take care,

Daniel

-- 
Daniel A. Freedman
Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics
Department of Physics
Cornell University

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2002-01-07 16:18 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 37+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
     [not found] <1009995669.1253.17.camel@wookie-laptop.pdx.osdl.net>
2001-12-29 18:18 ` i686 SMP systems with more then 12 GB ram with 2.4.x kernel ? Harald Holzer
2001-12-29 18:45   ` Alan Cox
2001-12-29 21:24     ` M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
2001-12-30  0:25       ` M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
2001-12-30  2:14         ` Harald Holzer
2001-12-30  2:33           ` M. Edward Borasky
2002-01-01 18:15     ` M. Edward Borasky
2002-01-01 18:46       ` Alan Cox
2002-01-01 19:02         ` M. Edward Borasky
2002-01-02  1:16         ` H. Peter Anvin
2002-01-02 21:17         ` Gerrit Huizenga
2002-01-06  8:20           ` Benjamin LaHaise
2002-01-06 16:16             ` Alan Cox
2002-01-06 20:23               ` Benjamin LaHaise
2002-01-06 23:37               ` Chris Wedgwood
2002-01-07  0:29                 ` The COUGAR Project M. Edward Borasky
2002-01-07  2:18                 ` i686 SMP systems with more then 12 GB ram with 2.4.x kernel ? Marvin Justice
2002-01-07  2:38                   ` Chris Wedgwood
2002-01-07  4:40                     ` T. A.
2002-01-07 16:20               ` Hugh Dickins
2002-01-02 17:30   ` Timothy D. Witham
     [not found]     ` <1009994687.12942.14.camel@hh2.hhhome.at>
2002-01-02 23:50       ` Harald Holzer
2002-01-03  0:16         ` Alan Cox
2002-01-03 13:30           ` Rik van Riel
2002-01-04 12:09             ` Hugh Dickins
2002-01-04 12:15               ` Rik van Riel
2002-01-03  0:17         ` Mark Zealey
2002-01-03 13:28         ` Rik van Riel
2002-01-03 14:33         ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2002-01-03 16:38           ` Rik van Riel
2002-01-03 15:15         ` Anton Blanchard
2001-12-29 19:25 Dieter Nützel
2002-01-06 18:39 Daniel Freedman
2002-01-06 18:59 ` Marvin Justice
2002-01-06 19:45   ` Daniel Freedman
2002-01-06 20:15     ` Marvin Justice
2002-01-07  5:17       ` Daniel Freedman

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