Same-Page Merging - Increasing Memory Density in L4Re

Efficient memory management is crucial in modern computers to ensure that available memory resources are used optimally.
Especially in virtualized environments and multi-tenant scenarios, memory redundancy puts a lot of stress on a system.
The use of page de-duplication techniques, such as content-based page sharing (CBPS), is a common way to mitigate this effect.
In this talk, I explore the concept of CBPS and present SPMM, a generic framework for flexible page-sharing implementations in L4Re.
I show that through a deliberate design and pluggable components, SPMM can support arbitrary CBPS strategies and adapt to a wide range of application scenarios.
Furthermore, I demonstrate that SPMM integrates well with the rich L4Re ecosystem of services.
With only minor changes to existing L4Re code, SPMM functionality can be enabled for any software running on L4Re, such as applications, other services and even virtual machines.
(Großer Beleg)