Virtual memory compression: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:27, 25 August 2024

Revision as of 07:09, 26 May 2025

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===Origins===

[[Acorn Computers]]' Unix variant, [[RISC iX]], was supplied as the primary operating system for its R140 workstation released in 1989.<ref name="acornuser198912">{{cite magazine | url=https://archive.org/details/AcornUser089-Dec89/page/n67/mode/2up | magazine=Acorn User | title=Power to the People | last1=Cox | first1=James | date=December 1989 | access-date=6 September 2020 | pages=66-67,69,71}}</ref> RISC iX provided support for demand paging of compressed executable files. However, the principal motivation for providing compressed executable files was to accommodate a complete Unix system in a hard disk of relatively modest size. Compressed data was not paged out to disk under this scheme.<ref name="taunton1991">{{cite journalbook | chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/1991-proceedings-tech-conference-nashville/page/385/mode/1up | journaltitle=Proceedings of the Summer 1991 USENIX Conference, Nashville, TN, USA, June 1991 | publisher=USENIX Association | year=1991 | last1=Taunton | first1=Mark | titlechapter=Compressed Executables: An Exercise in Thinking Small | pages=385–404}}</ref><ref name="taunton1991_unix_internals">{{cite newsgroup | title=Compressed executables | date=22 January 1991 | access-date=10 October 2020 | last1=Taunton | first1=Mark | newsgroup=comp.unix.internals | message-id=[e-mail] | url=https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.unix.internals/mGP6CTNdfDI/4NKaA4_rIxgJ}}</ref>

Paul R. Wilson proposed compressed caching of virtual memory pages in 1990, in a paper circulated at the ACM OOPSLA/ECOOP '90 Workshop on Garbage Collection ("Some Issues and Strategies in Heap Management and Memory Hierarchies"), and appearing in ACM SIGPLAN Notices in January 1991.<ref name ="WilsonIssuesStrategies"/>