Re: [9fans] PDP11 (Was: Re: what heavy negativity!)

[cinap_lenrek@felloff.net]

> But the reason I want this is to reduce latency to the first
> access, especially for very large files. With read() I have
> to wait until the read completes. With mmap() processing can
> start much earlier and can be interleaved with background
> data fetch or prefetch. With read() a lot more resources
> are tied down. If I need random access and don't need to
> read all of the data, the application has to do pread(),
> pwrite() a lot thus complicating it. With mmap() I can just
> map in the whole file and excess reading (beyond what the
> app needs) will not be a large fraction.

you think doing single 4K page sized reads in the pagefault
handler is better than doing precise >4K reads from your
application? possibly in a background thread so you can
overlap processing with data fetching?

the advantage of mmap is not prefetch. its about not to do
any I/O when data is already in the *SHARED* buffer cache!
which plan9 does not have (except the mntcache, but that is
optional and only works for the disk fileservers that maintain
ther file qid ver info consistently). its *IS* really a linux
thing where all block device i/o goes thru the buffer cache.

--
cinap