Re: [PATCH 2/3] xvmalloc memory allocator

[Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>]

Pekka Enberg wrote:
> On 3/20/2009, "Christoph Lameter" <cl@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>>> I think, with a bit playing around with interfaces, it can be turned into
>>> general purpose allocator (this will most probably lack highmem support).
>> Then it would need to implement the SLAB api (see include/linux/slab.h).
>> Thus we are getting slab allocator #5.
> 
> I do not see the point in that. As I suggested earlier, you should
> probably just move this into drivers/block/ and make it a private
> compcache allocator.
> 

Your wish. But, really, we should not dismiss an O(1) allocator with great
space-efficiency so easily. I think it will be great at least for embedded
devices (its counterpart, SLOB is simply funny).

Just to add to this, Xen recently included a variant of TLSF allocator
which was used in earlier versions of compcache. TLSF is allocator on
which xvmalloc is based.
http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-unstable.hg?file/0477f9061c8a/xen/common/xmalloc_tlsf.c
(Though I do not know which parts of xen depend on this allocator).

and xvmalloc vs tlsf arguments are here:
http://code.google.com/p/compcache/wiki/xvMalloc

tlsf:
http://rtportal.upv.es/rtmalloc/

Anyways, I will move it to drivers/block.

Thanks,
Nitin