Systemtap loading huge kernel file

[Petr Machata <pmachata at redhat dot com>]

This is an excerpt from the chat that I had with Frank Eigler the other day:

[...]
<fche> machatap, so that's one scenario.  another one is all the work 
elfutils appears to do when just opening a big fat vmlinux file
<fche> (one built with "allyesconfig" for example)
<fche> it would be nice to find out whether some of that prep work -- 
applying all those relocations -- is really necessary that early
<fche> because as it is, we page in a huge file, and proceed to dirty 
lots of it, so we eat RAM

Before I start digging in elfutils to see what's even going on when 
elfutils processes kernel files, does anyone have any thoughts or tips?

Thanks,
PM