From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:07:26 -0800 (PST) From: Christoph Lameter Subject: Re: [patch 2/5] slub: Fallback to kmalloc_large for failing higher order allocs In-Reply-To: <84144f020802140056i6706f135s77473534e0b6fc0b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <20080214040245.915842795@sgi.com> <20080214040313.616551392@sgi.com> <84144f020802140056i6706f135s77473534e0b6fc0b@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Pekka Enberg Cc: Mel Gorman , Nick Piggin , Andrew Morton , linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Thu, 14 Feb 2008, Pekka Enberg wrote: > > We can use that handoff to avoid failing if a higher order kmalloc slab > > allocation cannot be satisfied by the page allocator. If we reach the > > out of memory path then simply try a kmalloc_large(). kfree() can > > already handle the case of an object that was allocated via the page > > allocator and so this will work just fine (apart from object > > accounting...). > > Sorry, I didn't follow the discussion close enough. Why are we doing > this? Is it fixing some real bug I am not aware of? It addresses Nick's concern about higher order allocations. It allows fallback to an order 0 alloc should memory become so fragmented that order 3 allocs can no longer be satisfied. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org