Rusty Swapping: Rewriting a Zswap Backend in Rust
summary
A Zswap backend (zblock) is reimplemented in Rust, registered via kernel stubs, and bench‑marked against the original C zblock, zsm and zbd. Build requires specific Rust compiler and bindgen versions and early kernels lack arm32 support (arm64 merged in 6.9), which blocks mainline submission. Rust output often has a smaller binary size when stripped, shows faster page load but slower page store than the C zblock, has slightly longer compile time, uses fewer unsafe regions, and otherwise works reasonably well.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:48Consulo group's Linux kernel work
- 5:45Zswap and allocators overview
- 8:40Zblock allocator details
- 13:22Rust for kernel development
- 16:37Rust in Linux kernel setup
- 19:51Rust kernel challenges
- 22:01Rewriting Zblock in Rust
- 25:37Rust atomics and locks
- 27:01C versus Rust performance
- 30:42Testing Rust Zblock
- 31:26Summary and future
- 33:55Q&A
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