Subject: Re: uvm_pageidlezero()
To: Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>
From: Chuck Silvers <chuq@chuq.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 06/21/2005 06:43:29
On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 10:54:02PM +0200, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Michael wrote:
> >So - is it really necessary to run uvm_pageidlezero in the idle loop?
> >Should I call it when CPU sleep mode isn't available or disabled?
> 
> I think it would be nice to have that as a sysctl'able knob for all 
> platforms, so they can decide for a power-conserving laptop (no zeroing), 
> or a server that wants to have zeroed pages readily available.

if a machine is idle for any significant amount of time, it will pretty
quickly zero all the free pages and then have nothing to do while idle.
so ideally we would check if there is idle-time work to be done and
do that if there is, or go into power-saving mode if there's not.
making the user choose between these is unnecessary.

-Chuck