In a computing system where the contents of main memory are held in compressed form, a possible problem is that changes in compressibility will lead to a condition where pageouts need be done, but the process to accomplish this may require more physical memory resources than are available, resulting in a system hang. The avoidance of this condition we term guaranteed forward progress, or GFP. There have been a number of proposals for system structures which ensure this property. In this paper, we briefly review these, then concentrate on two new directions, termed respectively orthogonal paging and dynamic address disabling. Either of these approaches appears to provide a feasible and possibly preferable means for obtaining GFP. For convenience in the discussion, we generally assume an IA32 processor architecture, and IBM’s Memory Extension Technology (MXT).
By: Peter A. Franaszek, Dan E. Poff
Published in: RC22338 in 2002
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