From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <149253372451ad25f1f57eddd12e33b3@proxima.alt.za>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] plan 9 overcommits memory?
Date: Tue,  4 Sep 2007 06:32:40 +0200
From: lucio@proxima.alt.za
In-Reply-To: <7b27f6e8ba51955a67e7c1997324b21f@plan9.bell-labs.com>
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> No, and it would be hard to do it because you'd need ways to compact
> fragmented memory after a lot of mallocs and frees.  And then, you'd
> need a way to fix the pointers after compacting.

Is it all localised, or is the code scattered across multiple kernel
modules?  Many years ago I put a lot of effort into a scheme for
automatic compacting of memory that worked pretty efficiently on an
8088 without being particularly architecture dependent.  When I tried
to implement it on NetBSD, it turned out that I did not understand
NetBSD particularly well and that was the last of my attempts.

The code has long been lost, but I remember the strategy very well, so
I could try again.

++L