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A comment on Computers are fast. Parent comment

Re:Computers are fast by senki on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @04:23PM (#1784791)
Good idea. They already do it.
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Re:Computers are fast by TeHCrAzY on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @06:40PM (#1785274)
Specifically: SuperFetch, first seen in Vista: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#...
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Re:Computers are fast by silentbicycle on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @07:57PM (#1785485)
Or Unix's mmap, which predates Vista by a couple decades. (It was designed around the time of 4.2BSD, i.e., 1983* .) I'd be shocked if Windows hasn't had a similar mechanism for years, as well.

* _The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System_, McKusick et al., p. 29-30.

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Re:Computers are fast by barrkel on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @07:42AM (#1786785)
mmap is not SuperFetch; and memory mapping has been in NT since it started.

What SuperFetch does is collect statistics about files hit by processes when they start up, so it can proactively cache bits of those files, to the point that it can cache files read by processes before those processes are ever started, assuming they are either commonly started or started on a schedule.

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