Re: Swap vs No Swap.

war (war@starband.net)
Thu, 22 Nov 2001 11:25:45 -0500


Why have SWAP if you don't need it - answer that.?

James A Sutherland wrote:

> On Thursday 22 November 2001 1:53 am, war wrote:
> > I do not understand something.
> >
> > How can having swap speed ANYTHING up?
>
> By providing ADDITIONAL storage. Yes, it's slower than RAM - but it's faster
> than not having the storage at all.
>
> > RAM = 1000MB/s.
> > DISK = 10MB/s
> >
> > Ram is generally 1000x faster than a hard disk.
> >
> > No swap = fastest possible solution.
>
> BS. You don't use swap INSTEAD of RAM, but AS WELL AS. Moving less frequently
> used data to swap allows you to put more frequently used data in RAM, which
> DOES speed things up. (At least, it does if the VM system works properly :P)
>
> By your logic, we should switch off the system RAM, too: after all, L2 cache
> is much faster again, so using RAM can only slow things down?
>
> James.

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