On Fri, 2 May 2003, Mark Mielke wrote:
> On Fri, May 02, 2003 at 12:19:25AM -0400, Chris Friesen wrote:
> > According to this:
> > http://asia.cnet.com/builder/program/dev/0,39009360,39062783,00.htm
> > using sendfile() is easier on the CPU due to less trashing of the TLB.
>
> Thanks for the link. It looks quite accurate.
>
> One question it raises in my mind, is whether there would be value in
> improving write()/send() such that they detect that the userspace
> pointer refers entirely to mmap()'d file pages, and therefore no copy
> of data from userspace -> kernelspace should be performed. The pages
> could be loaded and accessed directly (as they are with sendfile())
> rather than generating a page fault to load the pages. The TLB trashing
> does not need to occur.
>
> I guess the first response to this question would be 'why not use
> sendfile()? it already exists, and people have already begun to use
> it...'
>
> My answer is that I don't like sendfile(). It is not-yet-standard, and
> is fairly limited. I could just be naive, but I think that:
>
> write(fd, mmapped_file_pages, length);
>
> Could be transparently mapped to the sendfile() code in the kernel,
> minimizing the benefit of sendfile() having its own system call. It all
> comes down to optimization. The current implementation of mmap() is not
> optimal where mmap()'d file pages are passed as data to system calls.
This is somewhat similar to what I want to do as well. As long as sendfile
can have this, why cant we make write/send/... similar. Thus, removing the
copy operation. Then, one can easier support streaming applications (or
applications needing more control than sendfile)!
-ph
> mark
-
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 07 2003 - 22:00:18 EST