4 ms·
> Given that the author works at a large company, that has millions of machines, and where any swap change has cost implications in the tens of millions pounds,
by seppel 2y ago
> Given that the author works at a large company, that has millions of machines, and where any swap change has cost implications in the tens of millions pounds, I suspect the article is based on data, rather than vibes.
Yes, but the author is most likely optimizing for a metric that I don't care so much in my per personal computer while dismissing metrics that I care about.
> It was always the case. but then a TB of disk isn't that expensive anymore.
But swapping out GB of RAM is expensive in terms of latency.
- KaiserPro 2y agobut its rarely gb at the same time. Thats the point. Its a dumping ground for stuff thats not used very often. meaning that you can have a bigger VFS cache, which reduces latency
- seppel 2y ago> but its rarely gb at the same time. Thats the point. Its a dumping ground for stuff thats not used very often. But it has to be GB to actually make a difference. If your swap is not full of GB of data, then obviously you don't need it (or it just becomes a reserve when you are in an OOM situation - but this is where you don't want to be with swap avaible either)
- zygentoma 2y ago> > but its rarely gb at the same time. Thats the point. Its a dumping ground for stuff thats not used very often. > But it has to be GB to actually make a difference. If your swap is not full of GB of data, then obviously you don't need it (or it just becomes a reserve when you are in an OOM situation - but this is where you don't want to be with swap avaible either) I think the parent meant, that it barely needs to be read / write GBs at the same time. Not that that much swap is never being in use at the same time. So you can use a lot of swap, but will never need to read it back in all at once.
- KaiserPro 2y agoindeed, thank you for explaining it clearer than me!