Chapter 7. Memory

Linux is a virtual memory–based system where each process has its own virtual address space, and mappings to physical memory are made on demand. Its design allows for over-subscription of physical memory, which Linux manages with a page out daemon and physical swap devices and (as a last resort) the out-of-memory (OOM) killer. Linux uses spare memory as a file system cache, a topic covered in Chapter 8.

This chapter shows how BPF can expose application memory usage in new ways and help you examine how the kernel is responding to memory pressure. As CPU scalability has grown faster than memory speeds, memory I/O has become the new bottleneck. Understanding memory usage can lead to finding many performance wins.

Learning Objectives: ...

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