Re: [PATCH RT 00/02] SLOB optimizations

Steven Rostedt
2005-12-20T21:43:20Z

On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 22:15 +0200, Pekka Enberg wrote:
> Hi Steve and Matt,
>
> On 12/20/05, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> > That looks like quite an undertaking, but may be well worth it. I think
> > Linux's memory management is starting to show it's age. It's been
> > through a few transformations, and maybe it's time to go through
> > another. The work being done by the NUMA folks, should be taking into
> > account, and maybe we can come up with a way that can make things easier
> > and less complex without losing performance.
>
> The slab allocator is indeed complex, messy, and hard to understand.
> In case you're interested, I have included a replacement I started out
> a while a go. It follows the design of a magazine allocator described
> by Bonwick. It's not a complete replacement but should boot (well, did
> anyway at some point). I have also included a user space test harness
> I am using to smoke it.
>
> If there's enough interest, I would be more than glad to help write a
> replacement for mm/slab.c :-)

Hi Pekka,

What other interest have you pulled up on this? I mean, have others
shown interest in pushing something like this. Today's slab system is
starting to become like the IDE where nobody, but a select few
sado-masochis, dare to venture in. (I've CC'd them ;) Perhaps it would
make the addition of NUMA easier.

Maybe, putting this into RT might be a way to get it tested, and help us
with the memory management and a fully preemptible kernel.

-- Steve

For those just coming in, Pekka posted this: