Hi,

2012/1/6 Adrian Knoth [off-list ref]:

I was wondering why pthread_create() should cause minor page faults when
there is a pre-allocated pre-faulted 100MB memory pool.

That pre-allocated block of memory is used by Glibc for its malloc routines.
While doing a pthread_create() you go to the kernel. Inside the kernel
many functions allocate memory as well. This is outside the control of
the C-library.
Probably some function inside the kernel allocates this memory and
uses it, resulting in these page-faults.
One example is allocating memory for the stack.

Kind regards,

Remy