Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [PATCH -v4 0/2] Lockless memory allocator and list | From | Peter Zijlstra <> | Date | Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:04:09 +0100 |
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On Tue, 2010-11-16 at 08:38 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > I kind of like the lock-less list implementation (it could easily be > useful for random things, and it's very simple).
Yes, there's various implementations floating around, and we already have one in-kernel ( net/rds/xlist.h ), mason and axboe and me have been kicking around various patches using that thing in other circumstances as well.
[ At some point we had perf -- what now is kernel/irq_work.c -- using it as well, but the new code grew too complex due to requirements from Huang ]
> And I don't think the > notion of a lockless memory allocator is wrong either, although it > looks a lot more specialized than the list thing (the solution to > lockless allocations is generally simply to do them ahead of time). > Right, I don't generally object to lockless things, but they either need to be 1) faster than the existing code, and/or 2) have a very convincing use-case (other than performance) for their added complexity.
Afaict the proposed patch adds lots more LOCK'ed instructions into that allocator path than it removes, ie its a slow down for existing users.
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