Xref: utzoo comp.arch:11066 comp.sys.mips:90
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.mips
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Memory utilization & inter-process contention
Message-ID: <1989Aug22.163100.25540@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3332@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 16:31:00 GMT

In article <3332@blake.acs.washington.edu> lgy@newton.phys.washington.edu (Laurence Yaffe) writes:
>suppose you have a 32 Mbyte system and that there are only two processes
>running, each of which uses 25 Mbytes of virtual memory (almost all data space)
>with rapid, random access patterns...
>    This sort of contention could obviously be prevented by a smarter
>scheduling technique - something which would entirely swap out one
>process for a period of time in order to let the other process run.

Have you ever figured out how long it takes to swap out a 25MB process?
Or to swap it back in again?  The fact is, this example system simply
does not have enough main memory for its workload.  The fix is, either
double the memory or run the jobs in sequence rather than simultaneously.

"Real memory for real performance." -- Mike Tilson
-- 
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1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu