On 9/23/21 03:21, Kent Overstreet wrote: > So if we have this: > > struct page { > unsigned long allocator; > unsigned long allocatee; > }; > > The allocator field would be used for either a pointer to slab/slub's state, if > it's a slab page, or if it's a buddy allocator page it'd encode the order of the > allocation - like compound order today, and probably whether or not the > (compound group of) pages is free. The "free page in buddy allocator" case will be interesting to implement. What the buddy allocator uses today is: - PageBuddy - determine if page is free; a page_type (part of mapcount field) today, could be a bit in "allocator" field that would have to be 0 in all other "page is allocated" contexts. - nid/zid - to prevent merging accross node/zone boundaries, now part of page flags - buddy order - a list_head (reusing the "lru") to hold the struct page on the appropriate free list, which has to be double-linked so page can be taken from the middle of the list instantly Won't be easy to cram all that into two unsigned long's, or even a single one. We should avoid storing anything in the free page itself. Allocating some external structures to track free pages is going to have funny bootstrap problems. Probably a major redesign would be needed...