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From: hpa@zytor.com (H. Peter Anvin)
Subject: Re: [BUG] get_unmapped_area() change -> non booting machine
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 06:26:10 +0000 (UTC)
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Followup to:  <Pine.LNX.4.58.0402120833000.5816@home.osdl.org>
By author:    Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> 
> I really think that we should aim for "brk()" just working. It's often
> faster than mmap, and it's one of those very basic things (ie we should
> _not_ assume we have glibc and malloc(), and others may well want to use
> brk() too).
> 

Okay... I'll ask... what is the point with brk(), i.e. what makes it
faster?  If we didn't have brk(), we could get rid of UNMAPPED_BASE
and therefore get rid of the artificial splitting of userspace memory
(modulo prelink, but that's optional.)

brk() at least on the surface really looks like a strange legacy
interface.  Obviously it's important on nommu architectures, but on
mmu architectures it seems rather redundant.

	-hpa
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