Measuring the Impact of the Linux Memory Manager

Amajor concern of almost any operating system is the meth-ods and mechanisms it uses to manage its resources. Physi-cal memory and, in many cases, how it is mapped to virtual memory is one resource that almost all aspects of an operat-ing system and its applications require. Hence, the Memory Manager (MM) and Virtual Memory Managers (VMM) play a critical role in the systems performance. Due to its critical nature, it is important to understand all aspects of how the MM interacts with the operating system and the different types of processes that run on the machine. Our research strives to understand and define metrics mea-suring the performance of a MM and implement meaningful tools specifically for Linux. This paper will start by introducing some of the performance concerns of the MM and how they might be measured. At each stage, we will introduce the research we are performing to address the problems