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Date:      Thu, 08 Jul 1999 12:36:01 +1000
From:      Patryk Zadarnowski <patrykz@mycenae.ilion.eu.org>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        Peter Jeremy <jeremyp@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Bursting at the seams (was: Heh heh, humorous lockup) 
Message-ID:  <199907080236.MAA16726@mycenae.ilion.eu.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 08 Jul 1999 11:04:47 %2B0930." <19990708110446.P2340@freebie.lemis.com> 

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> Why not put the kernel in a different address space?  IIRC there's no
> absolute requirement for the kernel and userland to be in the same
> address space, and that way we would have 4 GB for each.

Wouldn't that make system calls that need to share data between kernel
and user  spaces hopelessly  inefficient?  Things like  sysctl() would
need to introduce (temporary)  memory mappings, and someone would have
to keep  track of these mappings  and remove them as  required, or the
kernel would probably run out of  address space in no time, given even
with 4GB to spare. On  top of that, every mapping established requires
some  messing arround with  the TLB,  which, at  least on  pentium, is
rather expensive.

Incidentally,  someone already experimented  with such  "dual" address
spaces on Linux, and  the result was a 30% or so  slow down. If you're
interested, I can  give you the relevant references  (the scenario was
somewhat  different, but  the source  of the  performance hit  was the
"dual" address space.)

patryk.


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