28 ms·
Apple has supported compressed memory pages for almost a decade now. It compresses pages before it writes pages to swap (iOS doesn't even have swap). The cost t
by giantrobot 3y ago
Apple has supported compressed memory pages for almost a decade now. It compresses pages before it writes pages to swap (iOS doesn't even have swap). The cost to compress pages is an order of magnitude better than writing to disk including SSDs.
Compressed pages aren't magic but they let 8GB go further than you might expect.
- Yizahi 3y agoWindows has memory compression for years too. Doesn't make low memory hardware usable.
- lproven 3y ago> Windows has memory compression for years too. You're right. > Doesn't make low memory hardware usable. You're wrong. It _really_ helps.
- benterix 3y agoCompressed pages are not unique to Apple and are used by Windows and Linux, too.
- lproven 3y agoOn by default in Windows 10. Not enabled by default in any Linux I have ever seen, and for context, in the last two years I've reviewed about 50 different distros. And I do mean entire distros, not just desktops.
- lproven 3y agoIndeed; it was one of the significant changes in Mavericks (10.9): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mavericks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mavericks It's an option in Linux; put `zswap.enable=1` in the kernel parameters. I do this routinely now, because I like old Thinkpads and a few of mine only have 8GB RAM. It's not transformational but the difference in performance is really noticeable: open a few big fat bloated memory-hungry apps, like anything using Electron, and wow, suddenly your machine stays responsive under load.