On Tue, 2002-01-15 at 17:14, James Rich wrote:
> Steve,
> I think you mentioned on this list a while ago that XFS comes from
> an environment (IRIX) where allocating memory could not fail. At least
> that is what I understood you to say. Since hardware resources are
> limited on every platform I'm stumped on how this could be. Could you
> give a basic explanation of why this works on IRIX but not on linux
> (without giving away any company secrets :) )? I realize this may be
> somewhat demanding so you could also tell me to take a hike :)
Does not fail can also mean does not return for a VERY long time. Plus
the memory system on Irix has a mechanism where various subsystems which
consume memory can register callouts which the memory system can call
to ask them to release memory. Linux does not have the latter except
for the explicit calls in page_launder or what ever it is called this
week.
Steve
>
> James Rich
> james@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
--
Steve Lord voice: +1-651-683-3511
Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software email: lord@xxxxxxx
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