Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!philmds!prle!prle1!peer
From: peer@prle1.UUCP (Tom van Peer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: /dev/swap - possibility of it being a ramdisk
Message-ID: <185@marx.prle1.UUCP>
Date: 24 Dec 87 07:46:23 GMT
References: <712@qetzal.UUCP> <183@tijc02.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcvax!prle!TvanPeer (Tom van Peer)
Organization: Philips Research Labs. Eindhoven
Lines: 25
Summary: Why swap from ram to ram ?

In article <183@tijc02.UUCP> seb022@tijc02.UUCP (Scott Bemis         ) writes:
> Hello Wizards,
> 
> Watching my poor little unix boxes swap, it occurred to me:
> why not utilize some extra ram to implement /dev/swap? It seems that
> the machine would speed up quite a bit, and hey, extra memory
> is pretty inexpensive, at least for the smaller 
> unix boxes. Also, it would be tactically easier to
> 
> I've never seen anyone mention this, and it may be that it would
> require major hacking on the kernel, but you guys know best...
> 

Why bother to swap from ram to ram ? If you have extra memory I think you
should use it as primary and not as secondary memory.  It's a different case
off course if you want to use ram as an extra disk with a file system on it, 
then you have an extra archieving function.  But in the case of /dev/swap 
you're only moving pieces of program back and forth, only to relieve your 
primary memory, so why would you want to do that entirely in ram ?


Tom van Peer.
Philips Research Labs. Eindhoven.
E-mail: mcvax!prle!TvanPeer.
phone: +31 - 40 - 743796