Linux 6.9 Will Boot Much Faster For Systems With Large Amounts Of RAM

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.9 Will Boot Much Faster For Systems With Large Amounts Of RAM

The Linux 6.9 kernel will be able to boot systems with large amounts of memory -- and in particular making use of HugeTLB pages -- much faster than with previous kernels, netting a noticeable reduction in boot times...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.9-RAM-HugeTLB-Boot-Fast

[M@GOid]

Linux 6.9 Will Boot Much Faster For Systems With Large Amounts Of RAM

Me: Finally, my 16GB of RAM laptop will start faster!
Article: "Hugetlb initialization during boot takes up a considerable amount of time. For instance, on a 2TB system"
Me: sad Picachu face...

[kylew77]

Me: Finally, my 16GB of RAM laptop will start faster!
Article: "Hugetlb initialization during boot takes up a considerable amount of time. For instance, on a 2TB system"
Me: sad Picachu face...

Same! I have a old Intel Xeon server with 48GB of RAM and I was like so it will be faster? Even when I worked in a DC we only used 128GB of RAM in our systems. I frankly didn't even know 12TB of RAM was possible in a single server!

[Jumbotron]

Same! I have a old Intel Xeon server with 48GB of RAM and I was like so it will be faster? Even when I worked in a DC we only used 128GB of RAM in our systems. I frankly didn't even know 12TB of RAM was possible in a single server!

I imagine that on your 128GB system you could MEASURE a difference with some profiler / benchmarker. Then again you certainly won't FEEL it. That said, I'm glad that this optimizer is in place because I remember someone saying that I would never need more than 640K of RAM....<ahem>.

[sarmad]

Me: Finally, my 16GB of RAM laptop will start faster!
Article: "Hugetlb initialization during boot takes up a considerable amount of time. For instance, on a 2TB system"
Me: sad Picachu face...

Same here, except that I have 64gb of ram, so I had an arrogant smile when I read the title.

[Rob72]

We have 21 servers with 4TB RAM, so this would be nice for them, because the bootup time is noticeably longer on them, compared to our standard servers with "only" 512GB. But realistically we will never see the benefit on these servers, as they are running Rocky Linux 8.x (kernel 4.18), and are unlikely to be upgraded even to Rocky Linux 9.x (kernel 5.14) before they are replaced, never mind a 6.9 kernel.

But such memory amounts will become more common, so we should get to see the benefit at some point with future servers.

[byteabit]

Like most users, same here. No other words needed.

[dragorth]

We have 21 servers with 4TB RAM, so this would be nice for them, because the bootup time is noticeably longer on them, compared to our standard servers with "only" 512GB. But realistically we will never see the benefit on these servers, as they are running Rocky Linux 8.x (kernel 4.18), and are unlikely to be upgraded even to Rocky Linux 9.x (kernel 5.14) before they are replaced, never mind a 6.9 kernel.

But such memory amounts will become more common, so we should get to see the benefit at some point with future servers.

You will get to see it at the replacement time.
Unless you want to try an champion the use of an out of band Kernel to increase up time. I am sure there is a business case that could be made, though I have no idea on how much money would be saved on downtime for that half a minut.

[MorrisS.]

So what is it meant for large amount of RAM? What's the impact on 16 or 32 GB or even 64?

[byteabit]

So what is it meant for large amount of RAM? What's the impact on 16 or 32 GB or even 64?

None. The improvements here are only relevant to really huge amounts of RAM, such as in TB range.