Hello Mr. Michal, Thanks for your comments. Sorry. There was a small typo in my last sentence (mitigating not *migitating* memory fragmentation) That means how can I measure the memory fragmentation either from user space or from kernel space. Is there a way to measure the amount of memory fragmentation in linux? Can you provide me some references for that? Thanks, Pintu --- On Thu, 4/14/11, Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > From: Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@xxxxxxxxxx> > Subject: Re: Regarding memory fragmentation using malloc.... > To: "Américo Wang" <xiyou.wangcong@xxxxxxxxx>, "Pintu Agarwal" <pintu_agarwal@xxxxxxxxx> > Cc: "Andrew Morton" <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Eric Dumazet" <eric.dumazet@xxxxxxxxx>, "Changli Gao" <xiaosuo@xxxxxxxxx>, "Jiri Slaby" <jslaby@xxxxxxx>, "azurIt" <azurit@xxxxxxxx>, linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx, linux-fsdevel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Jiri Slaby" <jirislaby@xxxxxxxxx> > Date: Thursday, April 14, 2011, 5:47 AM > On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:44:50 +0200, > Pintu Agarwal <pintu_agarwal@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote: > > As I can understand from your comments that, malloc > from user space will not have much impact on memory > fragmentation. > > It has an impact, just like any kind of allocation, it just > don't care about > fragmentation of physical memory. You can have only > 0-order pages and > successfully allocate megabytes of memory with malloc(). > > > Will the memory fragmentation be visible if I do > kmalloc from > > the kernel module???? > > It will be more visible in the sense that if you allocate 8 > KiB, kernel will > have to find 8 KiB contiguous physical memory (ie. 1-order > page). > > >> No. When you call malloc() only virtual > address space is allocated. > >> The actual allocation of physical space occurs > when user space accesses > >> the memory (either reads or writes) and it happens > page at a time. > > > > Here, if I do memset then I am accessing the > memory...right? That I am doing already in my sample > program. > > Yes. But note that even though it's a single memset() > call, you are > accessing page at a time and kernel is allocating page at a > time. > > On some architectures (not ARM) you could access two pages > with a single > instructions but I think that would result in two page > faults anyway. I > might be wrong though, the details are not important > though. > > >> what really happens is that kernel allocates the > 0-order > >> pages and when > >> it runs out of those, splits a 1-order page into > two > >> 0-order pages and > >> takes one of those. > > > > Actually, if I understand buddy allocator, it > allocates pages from top to bottom. > > No. If you want to allocate a single 0-order page, > buddy looks for a > a free 0-order page. If one is not found, it will > look for 1-order page > and split it. This goes up till buddy reaches > (MAX_ORDER-1)-page. > > > Is the memory fragmentation is always a cause of the > kernel space program and not user space at all? > > Well, no. If you allocate memory in user space, > kernel will have to > allocate physical memory and *every* allocation may > contribute to > fragmentation. The point is, that all allocations > from user-space are > single-page allocations even if you malloc() MiBs of > memory. > > > Can you provide me with some references for migitating > memory fragmentation in linux? > > I'm not sure what you mean by that. > > --Best regards, > > _ > _ > .o. | Liege of Serenely Enlightened Majesty of > o' \,=./ `o > ..o | Computer Science, Michal "mina86" > Nazarewicz (o o) > ooo +-----<email/xmpp: mnazarewicz@xxxxxxxxxx>-----ooO--(_)--Ooo-- > > -- > To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' > in > the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx > For more info on Linux MM, > see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . > Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ > Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> > email@xxxxxxxxx > </a> > -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href