-=> On 15 Dec 95  16:26:29 Mike Bilow said to Andrew Grillet <=-


 AG> I had a discussion with someone in which it was suggested it
 AG> might be possible to compress stuff being swapped. Not to
 AG> save disk space, which is a minor issue, but to reduce
 AG> amount of data transfer, as it is slow.

 MB> You could do it, and IBM has looked at the idea for OS/2.  However,
 MB> the end result of the analysis is that disk space is cheap and
 MB> plentiful, while CPU time for compression and decompression is
 MB> neither.

My point was that DISK TRANSFER TIME is very expensive. If you run an
IDE based system, the CPU does the transfers - if it does compression first
and the transfer is twice as fast, then all that is needed is that the
compression takes half the time a disk-write takes - not a great achievement!

Decompression is normally faster than compression,

 MB> Therefore, compressing the swapfile is just not economical.

Very true on my SCSI based server, but not on the IDE based workstations.

 AG> Lots of us don't have Internet cos we can't afford the phone
 AG> bills. Local calls are VERY far from free in Europe.

 MB> You should get rid of those government telecommunications monopolies.

We have ... under the conservative government, they were replaced with
private monopolies!

Andrew



... A pessimist complains about noise when opportunity knocks
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.12 OS/2 [NR]