Re: [RFC PATCH v1 0/4] Introduce merge identical pages mechanism

From: Aleksey Romanov
Date: Wed Nov 23 2022 - 04:08:13 EST


On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 01:13:55PM +0900, Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> On (22/11/22 12:14), Aleksey Romanov wrote:
> > > IIRC that was patent in question:
> > >
> > > https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e2/66/9e/0ddbfae5c182ac/US9977598.pdf
> >
> > I think the patent is talking about "mapping the virtual address" (like
> > in KSM). But zram works with the "handle" abstraction, which is a boxed
> > pointer to the required object. I think my implementation and the patent
> > is slightly different.
> >
> > Also, the patent speaks of "compressing" pages. In this case, we can add
> > zs_merge() function (like zs_compact()), that is, remove the merge logic
> > at the allocator level. zsmalloc doesn't say anything about what objects
> > it can work with. Implementation at the zsmalloc level is possible,
> > though more complicated that at the zram level.
> >
> > I believe that we can implement at least one of the options I proposed.
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> Oh, yeah, I'm not saying that we cannot have something like that
> in zram/zsmalloc, just wanted to give some historical retrospective
> on this and point at some implementation details that should be
> considered.

Okay, in this case, can you review my patches please?

--
Thank you,
Alexey