Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Valid argument with FAT on spinning rust, invalid with ext4 on ssd. ext4 is extent-based so the fragmentation overhead doesn't happen.


The swap partition does not have a filesystem, it is a linear list of blocks.


Neither i nor parent said that. Confusion?


ext4 is irrelevant to what happens when a file is backed by swap; even with swapfiles, the mm subsystem more or less goes behind the back of the filesystem to access the disk corresponding to the swapfile.

The overhead of making (size-of-read / 4kb) requests (potentially stalling the reading process for every page) is relevant even on an ssd; there are costs to random access beyond moving a disk head and waiting for a platter to spin into position, and those costs are still relevant with solid-state storage.


You wrote your comment like it was a rebuttal of the person above you, but the text supports what they said: A filesystem is faster than swap for this.

What was your intent?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: