Tag
page-cache
- Aug 13, 2026 Buffer Pool Frames, Pin Counts, and Replacement Under Pin Pressure How a page identifier is mapped to a frame of memory, why a pin is not a lock, what happens when every candidate for eviction is pinned, and how clock sweeps approximate LRU. databases
- May 25, 2026 Zero-Copy Paths: What sendfile, splice, and mmap Remove Which memory copies each zero-copy interface eliminates, which ones remain, and the page-cache, alignment, and lifetime constraints that decide whether the saving is real. performance engineering
- May 19, 2026 What write() Actually Does Before Data Leaves the Process How a buffered write lands in the page cache as dirty pages, when the kernel begins writing them back, and why the call returning does not mean the bytes are on the device. performance engineering
- May 8, 2026 Splitting Footprint by Mapping Type: Anonymous, File-Backed, and Special How a process address space divides into anonymous, file-backed, and special mappings, what each contributes to footprint, and how to read the permission and label fields that identify them. memory systems
- Feb 27, 2026 Readahead Policy and the Read Sizes the Page Cache Actually Sees How the kernel detects sequential access, how far ahead it reads, and why a reader that is fed by readahead measures the cache rather than the storage device. performance engineering
- Jan 20, 2026 The Page Cache and the Writeback Path Where a written byte actually lives before it reaches the device, how dirty pages are tracked and flushed, and why write() returning does not mean the data is on disk. filesystems
- Jan 14, 2026 A Completed Write Is Not Yet Durable: Persistence Domains and Ordering Why write and close return long before bytes reach media, how a persistence domain decides what a crash can lose, and why durability, ordering, and atomicity need separate mechanisms. memory systems
- Oct 17, 2025 mmap and the Page-Fault Path: What a Mapping Really Does A memory mapping installs page-table entries lazily, so the first touch of each page faults into the page cache. The fault path, the shared and private cases, and the failure modes that follow from the split between mapping and page tables. systems programming
- Jun 16, 2025 Memory-Mapped Persistence: What msync and DAX Actually Guarantee How a shared mapping becomes durable, why msync is not fsync, what direct access bypasses the page cache, and where the mapping and the filesystem metadata disagree after a crash. memory systems
- Nov 22, 2024 Alignment, O_DIRECT, and the Cost of Bypassing the Page Cache The alignment and size rules a direct I/O request must satisfy, which part of the page-cache path disappears and which remains, and the cases where the bypass loses rather than wins. performance engineering
- Jun 9, 2023 fsync, fdatasync, and Where the Durability Boundary Actually Sits What the kernel guarantees when a write returns, which metadata fdatasync skips, why direct I/O does not remove the need for a flush, and how double buffering wastes memory. databases