The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 13, 2011
Filed:
May. 15, 2009
Henri Han Van Riel, Nashua, NH (US);
Matthias Clasen, Acton, MA (US);
Henri Han van Riel, Nashua, NH (US);
Matthias Clasen, Acton, MA (US);
Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, NC (US);
Abstract
Embodiments of the present invention provide a mechanism for an operating system and applications to cooperate in memory management. Applications register with the operating system for cooperative memory management. The operating system monitors the memory and determines a memory 'pressure' related to the amount of demand for the memory. As the memory pressure increases, the operating system provides a memory pressure signal as feedback to the registered applications. The operating system may send this signal to indicate it is about to commence evicting pages from the memory or when it has commenced swapping out application data. In response to the signal, the registered applications may evaluate the memory pressure, determine which data should be freed, if any, and provide this information back to the operating system. The operating system may then free those portions of memory relinquished by the applications. By releasing data the system may thus avoid swapping and increase its performance.