Re: memory

Ketil.Z (ketil@ii.uib.no)
05 May 1996 22:09:58 +0200


Justin Dossey <dossey@flex.net> writes:

> I heard that linux caches better than the hardware:

I may be wrong, but I'll bet that what you heard was regarding disk
caching, and not L2 memory caches. Usually, it's a lot better to let
the OS handle caching af disk, because

1) it knows better what you're going to need next from the disk

2) if you don't do much disk access, it can use the memory for other,
more useful purposes.

> if one has a 256k pipeline-burst cache, and runs linux (of course,
> under 64M of RAM), then it is faster than the same computer with a
> 512k pipeline-burst cache... because Linux caches faster?

Linux is probably as fast or faster than most competing OSes, but mainly
because it has been more thoroughly tested and optimized, and because it
has been written by people with somewhat more limited hardware resources
than your average big computer corporation.

~kzm

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