Empirical study of memory-data: Characteristics and compressibility

Abstract

The authors present results from an investigation into the characteristics of memory-data in Unix applications. The memory-data analysis shows a number of surprising characteristics and reveals substantial similarities across applications. It is also shown that memory-data typically compresses to half the original volume. The characteristics of the memory-data, as well as the results on compression, are of interest to researchers connected with computer systems design in general, and resource management in particular.