Cross-kernel prevalence and modes of physical memory fragmentation

Ascertain whether operating system kernels other than Linux (such as FreeBSD, Windows, and BSD variants) exhibit similar levels and modes of external physical memory fragmentation, to evaluate the portability and generality of characterization and mitigation techniques.

Background

Anduril and the measurement methodology in the paper target Linux, leveraging Linux-specific mechanisms (e.g., buddy allocator behavior, compaction, shrinkers) and /proc/kpageflags for page-level usage flags.

The authors explicitly note uncertainty regarding whether other OS kernels experience similar fragmentation levels and patterns, highlighting an open question about the generality of their findings and the potential need for kernel-specific methodologies or adaptations.