Nick Piggin wrote:

Marcelo Tosatti wrote:

quoted

Hi kernel fellows,

I volunteer. I'll try something tomorrow to compare swappiness of 
older kernels like  2.6.5 and 2.6.6, which were fine on SGI's Altix 
tests, up to current newer kernels (on small memory boxes of course).

Hi Marcelo,

Just a suggestion - I'd look at the thrashing control patch first.
I bet that's the cause.

Good point!

I recall one of my users found his workload which often hit swap lightly 
was swapping much heavier and his performance dropped dramatically until 
I stopped including the swap thrash control patch. I informed Rik about 
it some time back so I'm not sure if he addressed it in the meantime.

Cheers,
Con