The 2.4 VM's virtual scan has the effect of swapping out one process at a
time. 2.5's physical(ish) scan doesn't have that side-effect.
It means that in 2.4, the lucky processes can make decent progress. In
2.5, everyone makes equal progress and everyone thrashes everyone else to
bits.
To fix this properly we need load control: to identify when the system is
thrashing and to explicitly suspend chosen processes for a while, so other
processes can make decent progress. A couple of people are looking at
that; I'm not sure what stage it is at.
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