[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Development Digest

[Jon A. Lambert]

On  8 Apr 98 at 13:33, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Apr 1998 09:39:55 PST8PDT 
> Justin McKinnerney<xymox at toon.org> wrote:
> 
> > First, I agree with your first comment. I have heard people claim
> > their disk-based muds run faster than memory-based, but this all
> > semantics. If a disk-based game does run notably faster than it's
> > memory-based equivilant, it's simply due to the fact the operating
> > system is doing a better job of memory managment (perhaps doing
> > cache alignment, for instance), which wouldn't be suprising
> > considering some of the code for MUDs I have seen.
> 
> No.  Typically it has nothing to do with the OS'es memory supports,
> but has to do with working __around__ the OS'es memory model as it
> is inefficient for the task at hand.  The performance gains are due
> to the fact that the disk-based game uses intelligent cacheing which
> forces a (reasonably) minimum number of pages for the game's working
> set.  Its not very difficult to put the entire world in RAM, and
> then chew all your performance with page faults -- or to get it back
> again by keeping some of the disk IO, but losing the constant page
> faults.

Speaking of page faults... there are issues of implementation which,
if transgressed often enough, make for some bottlenecks in this area
outside of the disk vs. memory issue.

For example:

 This will cause 5000 page faults...

 for (col = 0; col < 1000; col++)
  for (row = 0; row < 5; row++)
           table[row , col] = 0;

 And this about 5 page faults

 for (row = 0; row < 5; col++)
      for (row = 0; col < 1000; row++)
           table[row , col] = 0;


The same scenario also occurs in good size link lists, where the
objects have been allocated haphazardly by a fiendish malloc().

There are many possible solutions.  I grab a hefty chunk of memory,
mark it unswappable and stay within that playground.  Then page out
unreferenced or least-referenced objects to disk as needed. You CAN do
a much better job at application memory management than the operating
system can.   

 
--
--/*\ Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD     Internet:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com /*\--
--/*\ Mud Server Developer's Page <http://www.netcom.com/~jlsysinc> /*\--
--/*\   "Everything that deceives may be said to enchant" - Plato   /*\--