Letting go - John Stultz

[Slides](http://www.linuxplumbersconf.org/2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/LettingGo.pdf)

A sensitive guide dealing with application caches under the pressures of low memory.

This talk will cover some of the recent work to allow applications to release memory to the kernel when the system is experiencing low memory conditions. The talk will focus on two basic approaches: applications pre-marking cache memory as freeable when not in use, allowing the kernel to reclaim it as needed, and APIs for kernel notification of lowmemory conditions that allow applications to then free up memory on their own.

We'll talk about the upstream status of these different approaches, the pros and cons of the different methods, and talk about types of applications that could make use of these methods and how it affects both enterprise and embedded environments.

John Stultz has worked with the IBM LTC for just over ten years. He has worked on x86 server enablement, Enterprise Realtime Linux, and now as a member of the Linaro.org effort. In the Linux community, he has worked mostly as a maintainer of the timekeeping subsystem, but has also worked on stability and scalability issues with the PREEMPT_RT patch, and most recently has been focused on upstreaming Android functionality into the mainline kernel.