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authorDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-07 18:49:45 +0000
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==========================
+Frequently Asked Questions
+==========================
+
+Why a new subsystem, instead of extending perf or other user space tools?
+=========================================================================
+
+First, because it needs to be lightweight as much as possible so that it can be
+used online, any unnecessary overhead such as kernel - user space context
+switching cost should be avoided. Second, DAMON aims to be used by other
+programs including the kernel. Therefore, having a dependency on specific
+tools like perf is not desirable. These are the two biggest reasons why DAMON
+is implemented in the kernel space.
+
+
+Can 'idle pages tracking' or 'perf mem' substitute DAMON?
+=========================================================
+
+Idle page tracking is a low level primitive for access check of the physical
+address space. 'perf mem' is similar, though it can use sampling to minimize
+the overhead. On the other hand, DAMON is a higher-level framework for the
+monitoring of various address spaces. It is focused on memory management
+optimization and provides sophisticated accuracy/overhead handling mechanisms.
+Therefore, 'idle pages tracking' and 'perf mem' could provide a subset of
+DAMON's output, but cannot substitute DAMON.
+
+
+Does DAMON support virtual memory only?
+=======================================
+
+No. The core of the DAMON is address space independent. The address space
+specific monitoring operations including monitoring target regions
+constructions and actual access checks can be implemented and configured on the
+DAMON core by the users. In this way, DAMON users can monitor any address
+space with any access check technique.
+
+Nonetheless, DAMON provides vma/rmap tracking and PTE Accessed bit check based
+implementations of the address space dependent functions for the virtual memory
+and the physical memory by default, for a reference and convenient use.
+
+
+Can I simply monitor page granularity?
+======================================
+
+Yes. You can do so by setting the ``min_nr_regions`` attribute higher than the
+working set size divided by the page size. Because the monitoring target
+regions size is forced to be ``>=page size``, the region split will make no
+effect.