From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 08:44:03 -0500 Memory allocators may disable interrupts or preemption as part of the allocation and freeing process. For PREEMPT_RT it is important that these sections remain deterministic and short and therefore don't depend on the size of the memory to allocate/ free or the inner state of the algorithm. Until v3.12-RT the SLAB allocator was an option but involved several changes to meet all the requirements. The SLUB design fits better with PREEMPT_RT model and so the SLAB patches were dropped in the 3.12-RT patchset. Comparing the two allocator, SLUB outperformed SLAB in both throughput (time needed to allocate and free memory) and the maximal latency of the system measured with cyclictest during hackbench. SLOB was never evaluated since it was unlikely that it preforms better than SLAB. During a quick test, the kernel crashed with SLOB enabled during boot. Disable SLAB and SLOB on PREEMPT_RT. [bigeasy: commit description.] Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- init/Kconfig | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) --- a/init/Kconfig +++ b/init/Kconfig @@ -1896,6 +1896,7 @@ choice config SLAB bool "SLAB" + depends on !PREEMPT_RT select HAVE_HARDENED_USERCOPY_ALLOCATOR help The regular slab allocator that is established and known to work @@ -1916,6 +1917,7 @@ config SLUB config SLOB depends on EXPERT bool "SLOB (Simple Allocator)" + depends on !PREEMPT_RT help SLOB replaces the stock allocator with a drastically simpler allocator. SLOB is generally more space efficient but
