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From: skh@vi.ri.cmu.edu (Steve Handerson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: swapping intelligently
Message-ID: <2402@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 6 Apr 90 14:33:38 GMT
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When I was working with lisp I'd have loved to limit the amount
of memory that lisp could hog for paging.
Otherwise a few seconds pause would swap my editor out.

I thought of writing (this is in MACH) a "pager shell"
you would run programs under, and would limit the number
of in-core pages everything under it could have.

Even better, it might be nice to allocate memory among
processes, or have "upper limits" of unshared swapping
memory per process.

It would be even better if the user could prioritize use of all
swapping resources.  I don't care if lisp grinds to a halt,
if I can edit unhampered at the same time (if my editor's swap
requests always take priority).

Do any operating systems already do this?

-- Steve