Re: [PATCH 08/12] Direct compact when a high-order allocation fails

[Rik van Riel]

On 02/12/2010 07:00 AM, Mel Gorman wrote:
> Ordinarily when a high-order allocation fails, direct reclaim is entered to
> free pages to satisfy the allocation.  With this patch, it is determined if
> an allocation failed due to external fragmentation instead of low memory
> and if so, the calling process will compact until a suitable page is
> freed. Compaction by moving pages in memory is considerably cheaper than
> paging out to disk and works where there are locked pages or no swap. If
> compaction fails to free a page of a suitable size, then reclaim will
> still occur.
>
> Direct compaction returns as soon as possible. As each block is compacted,
> it is checked if a suitable page has been freed and if so, it returns.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman<mel@xxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx>

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