Memory Optimizers
Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 2:58 am
I might have written operating systems for a living ...
In a virtual memory system, it makes no sense to "defragment" physical memory. Any physical memory page can map to any virtual memory page with no loss of performance.
In a virtual memory system there is little advantage in having free physical memory. It is better to keep pages that have been removed from the working set in physical memory, as XP does, until the memory is needed for some other page. This is why the modified page writer runs only occasionally.
It makes no sense to do anything that will force pages out of the standby or modified lists unnecessarily. A hard page fault (one from disk) takes something like 100 times as long as a soft page fault (one from the standby or modified list).
So, I agree with your choice not to support a "memory optimizer" even though some competitive products do.