System V.2 and growing processes

[Michael Grenier]

I posted this originally to comp.unix.questions but got no reply...
perhaps a wizard is called for :-)

My Microport V/AT box has a very very slow brk/sbrk call. It seems that
when a process wants to increase its brk value, the entire process must
be moved in memory or out to swap space EVEN when there is available
and contigous memory right next to (at higher addresses) the growing process.

I can't figure out why the kernel can't just assign the space to the process
instead of moving the entire process to some new spot in memory which
gets progressively slower as the process gets bigger.

Is this normal behavior for a System V.2 kernel?

    -Mike Grenier
    mike at cimcor.mn.org
    uunet!rosevax!cimcor!mike