[talk] Does swap still matter?

[Brian Cully]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2022 at 2:22 PM Mark Saad <nonesuch at longcount.org> wrote:
> Compressed pages (z-ram) is a cool idea in Linux and esxi have that reduce the need to swap inactive pages , it would be nice to see this ported / reimplement for a bsd .  It can help in both low ram conditions and when physical resources are limited ( like in a embedded setup ) .

Depends on your embedded setup. A lot of projects put a high priority
on predictability. You don't even allocate RAM because it means a
potential run-time failure or arbitrary blocking. Better to just stick
it all in the BSS so it won't even build or flash if you're using too
much memory. Compressed memory isn't useful there.

I know there are people working on embedded projects that use memory
allocation, but I've never seen any of the projects. Is it stuff like
robotics? Obviously environments like {micro, circuit}python require
it as well, but I assume that's mostly used by hobbyists and
educators.