Re: Does linux first allocate under 64MB?

Tony Cook (kernel@cook.ml.org)
Sun, 18 Oct 1998 23:11:32 +1000 (EST)


On 18 Oct 1998, Marc MERLIN wrote:
> The reason I ask is that as you know, many motherboards still have those
> braindead intel chipsets that can only cache 64MB of ram.

I have one of those broken chipsets (in one machine, anyway).

> If you put more memory in one of those machines, will linux first use the
> lower 64MB, and then the rest? Is there any way to prioritize memory like
> you can prioritize swap, and tell the kernel that memory between 64M and 96M
> for instance, is only to be used the rest of the memory is full, and if
> possible with data that is not as crucial (like disk cache)?

AFAIK, you can't get Linux to prioritize it's use of memory in the way you
describe, but there's a patch at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~keryan/slram/
which let's you use the slower RAM as fast swap, as longer as it's at a
higher physical address than the fast memory.

I've found this patch quite useful.

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