Re: [PATCH] Use extents for recording what swap is allocated.

[Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>]

Hi!

> > > > Switch from bitmaps to using extents to record what swap is allocated;
> > > > they make more efficient use of memory, particularly where the allocated
> > > > storage is small and the swap space is large.
> > > 
> > > As I said before, I like the overall idea, but I have a bunch of
> > > comments.
> > 
> > Okay, if Rafael likes it... lets take a look.
> > 
> > First... what is the _worst case_ overhead? AFAICT extents are very
> > good at the best case, but tend to suck for the worst case...?
> 
> That's right. In using this, we're relying on the fact that the swap
> allocator tries to act sensibly. I've only seen worse case performance
> when a user had two swap devices with the same priority (striped), but
> that was a bug. :)

Ok, but if the allocator somehow manages to stripe between two swap
devices, what happens?

IIRC original code was something like .1% overhead (8bytes per 4K, or
something?), bitmaps should be even better. If it is 1% in worst case,
that's probably okay, but it would be bad if it had overhead bigger
than 10times original code (worst case).
								Pavel
-- 
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