Take in mind that executable code on Linux is mapped in from disk, either from an executable or from a shared library. So every application's performance on Linux is heavily dependent on the disk cache.
If you have no swap, anonymous pages (stacks, heaps) cannot be evicted to disk and the thrashing is forced onto the disk cache. So the hard lock-up occurs earlier.
If you want to delay the lock-up as much as possible, enable swap and set swappiness high.
If you have no swap, anonymous pages (stacks, heaps) cannot be evicted to disk and the thrashing is forced onto the disk cache. So the hard lock-up occurs earlier.
If you want to delay the lock-up as much as possible, enable swap and set swappiness high.