Page Coloring

[K.J.]

(or "colouring" depending on where you are).

For those of you who don't know, page coloring is the method of making sure that blocks of virtual memory are "in sequence" with blocks of physical memory so that the L1 cache doesn't have to reload itself(taking several thousand cycles) each time you access something that spans 2 pages of memory.

My question is this, if I use the 4MB pages, do I need to even bother with page coloring? I think not, but am just wanting to know what other people say.

Thanks in advance,
K.J.

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In theory this is an optimization. But it is my experience that even if the original design does not either implement the optimization or leave a very clear path open for the optimization, it can be very painful to implement later. This experience though is pretty general and may not apply in this situation.

A good example of this, is to read the history behind some of the linux sub-systems. Many have been redisgned from scratch over the years. Enough so that the current kernel does not much look like the first one released.

Just my 2 cents...
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