Opportunistic Memory Reclaim Support Proposal Updated For The Linux Kernel

Canonical kernel engineer Andrea Righi has sent out an updated patch series implementing opportunistic memory reclaim support as a way of forcing the kernel to attempt to reclaim system memory.

Opportunistic memory reclaim provides a user-space interface to trigger an artificial memory pressure condition for the kernel to force it to reclaim memory. By artificially triggering a memory reclaim event before the system RAM is actually under pressure is being done in hopes of keeping the system more responsive.

This opportunistic memory reclaim support would help reduce the system memory footprint, speed-up VM migration time, and help with responsiveness. The proposed interface allows specifying the amount of memory to try to reclaim or "max" to reclaim as much memory as possible.

More details on this latest work for opportunistic memory reclaim support for the Linux kernel can be found via this patch series. This second set of "request for comments" patches changes around the ABI, drops memory release functionality, and supports showing the amount of memory reclaimed.

Also happening on the Linux memory front still is systemd-oomd that should land for the next systemd release.