Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Panther has more dynamic dynamic_pager
I've complained about the MacOS X VM system in the past. I hadn't seen anything regarding changes to it in Panther, but I just noticed that the dynamic pager in Panther now sets swap file sizes dynamically. In the past, swap files were allocated dynamically as more memory was needed. However, each swap file was a fixed size--80MB by default. The pager still allocates swap files as needed, but now it allocates files of different sizes. It appears to start at 64MB. I'm not certain what the algorithm is for determining when to increase this size, but it appears to do so by doubling each time. I have seen 128MB and 256MB files allocated.

I think it is also worth noting that there is a manual entry for dynamic_pager in Panther. I need to confirm, but I don't think that was the case in Jaguar.
comment []  trackback []  11:01:23 AM    



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