From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from chelm.cs.nmt.edu (yodaiken@chelm.cs.nmt.edu [129.138.6.50]) by kvack.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id FAA24112 for ; Wed, 27 Jan 1999 05:45:09 -0500 From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.nmt.edu Message-Id: <199901271031.DAA02948@chelm.cs.nmt.edu> Subject: Re: MM deadlock [was: Re: arca-vm-8...] Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 03:31:17 -0700 (MST) In-Reply-To: from "MOLNAR Ingo" at Jan 26, 99 04:21:30 pm Content-Type: text Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: mingo@chiara.csoma.elte.hu Cc: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, sct@redhat.com, groudier@club-internet.fr, torvalds@transmeta.com, werner@suse.de, andrea@e-mind.com, riel@humbolt.geo.uu.nl, Zlatko.Calusic@CARNet.hr, ebiederm+eric@ccr.net, saw@msu.ru, steve@netplus.net, damonbrent@earthlink.net, reese@isn.net, kalle.andersson@mbox303.swipnet.se, bmccann@indusriver.com, bredelin@ucsd.edu, linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: > i dont think it's correct to say: 'anything that cannot be segmented in > the physical memory space with page granularity, is considered to be > broken in this regard and is not guaranteed to be 100% supported by the > Linux architecture'. Sure. But let's keep in mind that paging is designed to avoid memory fragmentation, and big chunks mean you don't care about some minor loss of usable memory. If you have a 4G phys memory and need big linear pieces, it is far better to waste 3.9 meg by aligning end of data, then to complicate all memory allocation techniques in kernel so you don't waste it. In fact you'd probably want a simplified slab kmalloc: if size is 4meg allocate a 4meg chunk from 4meg list else if size< 4 meg either allocate a new 4 meg chunk and take space from it or find partially used 4 meg chunk with enough space in it. so you might have a list of partially used 4meg chunks lying about wasting some space, but ... -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm my@address' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/