Zero-Copy Techniques

Status Draft outlineSection Networking and I/O

“Zero copy” names several techniques that eliminate particular copies, not a universal guarantee that bytes never move or incur ownership costs.

Planned model

Trace buffers through ordinary reads, scatter-gather I/O, memory mapping, page remapping, and registered buffers. Count copies, mappings, pins, and lifetime constraints.

Questions

• Which specific source-to-destination copy is removed?
• What setup, pinning, alignment, or lifetime cost replaces it?
• When is copying a small message faster and simpler?

Exercise

Audit a claimed zero-copy path and enumerate every point at which payload bytes or metadata still move.