Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!yale!mfci!kerns
From: kerns@mfci.UUCP (A BBoard)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Random thoughts on paging.
Message-ID: <413@m3.mfci.UUCP>
Date: 26 May 88 15:07:34 GMT
References: <338@piring.cwi.nl>
Sender: root@mfci.UUCP
Reply-To: kerns@mfci.UUCP (A BBoard)
Organization: Multiflow Computer Inc., Branford Ct. 06405
Lines: 25

In article <338@piring.cwi.nl> jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen) writes:
=
=Two idle thoughts I had on paging:
=
=I have the feeling that a lot of programs will go through a fixed
=sequence of page faults during startup. This is especially true of
=programs like editors, that will always read your startup script and
=execute numerous commands before finally entering interactive mode.
=
=Now, it seems it would be worthwile to build a list of the first,
=say, 50 pages in the order of need, and attach that to the program so
=that the OS can immedeately start paging in the next page as soon as
=it has started the program. This should reduce latency, and possibly
=forestall future page faults.
=
=Would this be worthwile? Has any work in this direcction been done?

Data General's AOS/VS allows a user to specify specific pages or ranges of
pages to prepage on a program-by-program basis.  You can also specify the page
clustering.

I have actually used this facility to make text editors start up faster.
----
Dan Kerns				kerns@multiflow.com or mfci!kerns
Multiflow Computer			(203)488-6090