Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] staging: zcache: xcfmalloc support

Nitin Gupta
2011-09-16T17:53:00Z

On 09/15/2011 03:24 PM, Seth Jennings wrote:

> On 09/15/2011 12:29 PM, Dan Magenheimer wrote:
>>> From: Seth Jennings [mailto:sjenning@linux.vnet.ibm.com]
>>> Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] staging: zcache: xcfmalloc support
>>>

>>
>> Seth, I am still not clear why it is not possible to support
>> either allocation algorithm, selectable at runtime. Or even
>> dynamically... use xvmalloc to store well-compressible pages
>> and xcfmalloc for poorly-compressible pages. I understand
>> it might require some additional coding, perhaps even an
>> ugly hack or two, but it seems possible.
>
> But why do an ugly hack if we can just use a single allocator
> that has the best overall performance for the allocation range
> the zcache requires. Why make it more complicated that it
> needs to be?
>
>>

I agree with Seth here: a mix of different allocators for the (small)
range of sizes which zcache requires, looks like a bad idea to me.
Maintaining two allocators is a pain and this will also complicate
future plans like compaction etc.

Thanks,
Nitin