Re: [RFC] My research agenda for 2.7

Daniel Phillips
2003-06-27T15:50:52Z

On Friday 27 June 2003 17:22, Mel Gorman wrote:
> I still suspect moving order0 allocations to slab will be a fragmentation
> resistent allocator but my main concern would be that the slab allocator
> overhead, both CPU and storage requirements will be too high.
>
> On the other hand, it would do some things you are looking for. For
> example, it allocates large blocks of memory in one lump and then
> allocates them piecemeal. Second, it would be resistent to the FAFAFA
> problem Martin pointed out. As slabs would be allocated in a large block
> from the buddy, you are guarenteed that you'll be able to free up buddies.
> Lastly, as there would be a cache specifically for userspace pages, a
> defragger that looked exclusively at user pages will still be sure of
> being able to free adjacent buddies.
>
> I need to write a proper RFC.....

You might want to have a look at this:

http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/vmalloc/
(Vmalloc: A Memory Allocation Library)

Regards,

Daniel