[patch-2.3.40-pre6] kzalloc() (ala kmem_zalloc() of SVR4)

[Jeremy Fitzhardinge]

On 23-Jan-00 Horst von Brand wrote:
> What pages would you clear? Linux uses every bit of memory it gets its
> hands on, and pages that are written out stay around in case their contents
> are needed later. So I see very little oportunity for scavenging pages for
> zeroing (perhaps just stuff that went to closed/unmounted filesystems).

All the private pages (data, bss, stack) from dead processes are good
candidates for zeroing, particularly since you need zeroed pages anyway for
zfod mappings.  The big problem with background zeroing is that it trashes
useful stuff in the cache, but some architectures (at least the PPC) let you
lock down the cache while you scribble.

        J

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