Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Should vmalloc and kmalloc be integrated? | From | (Eric W. Biederman) | Date | 06 Nov 1997 17:29:02 -0600 |
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Except for DMA buffer allocations (where contiguous memory is needed) vmalloc and kmalloc are equivally correct to use. There is allready a DMA priority in the linux kernel for kmalloc so it can detect that situation.
Considering that several systems have trouble allocating large chunks of continous memory, for the slab allocator? I think using vmalloc as a fallback for kmalloc either indirectly in kmalloc or indirectly in the code itself is a good idea that shouldn't be too difficult.
Considering the number of places in the kernel and the possibility for optimizing, vmalloc I think should become a special case of kmalloc. It is easy for to detect which is wich as the allocated addresses are in different areas of the address space.
I should probably ask this directly of whoever maintains kmalloc but I'm lazy and I'm just bouncing this off the list.
Eric
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