On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 10:55 AM Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi, > > as we all know, we currently have three slab allocators. As we discussed > at LPC [1], it is my hope that one of these allocators has a future, and > two of them do not. > > The unsurprising reasons include code maintenance burden, other features > compatible with only a subset of allocators (or more effort spent on the > features), blocking API improvements (more on that below), and my > inability to pronounce SLAB and SLUB in a properly distinguishable way, > without resorting to spelling out the letters. > > I think (but may be proven wrong) that SLOB is the easier target of the > two to be removed, so I'd like to focus on it first. > > I believe SLOB can be removed because: > > - AFAIK nobody really uses it? It strives for minimal memory footprint > by putting all objects together, which has its CPU performance costs > (locking, lack of percpu caching, searching for free space...). I'm not > aware of any "tiny linux" deployment that opts for this. For example, > OpenWRT seems to use SLUB and the devices these days have e.g. 128MB > RAM, not up to 16 MB anymore. I've heard anecdotes that the performance > SLOB impact is too much for those who tried. Googling for > "CONFIG_SLOB=y" yielded nothing useful. I am all for removing SLOB. There are some devices with configs where SLOB is enabled by default. Perhaps, the owners/maintainers of those devices/configs should be included into this thread: tatashin@soleen:~/x/linux$ git grep SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/clps711x_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/collie_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/multi_v4t_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/omap1_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/pxa_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/tct_hammer_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/arm/configs/xcep_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/openrisc/configs/or1ksim_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/openrisc/configs/simple_smp_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/riscv/configs/nommu_k210_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/riscv/configs/nommu_k210_sdcard_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/riscv/configs/nommu_virt_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/sh/configs/rsk7201_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/sh/configs/rsk7203_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/sh/configs/se7206_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/sh/configs/shmin_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y arch/sh/configs/shx3_defconfig:CONFIG_SLOB=y kernel/configs/tiny.config:CONFIG_SLOB=y > > - Last time we discussed it [2], it seemed SLUB memory requirements can > be brought very close to SLOB's if needed. Of course it can never have > as small footprint as SLOB due to separate kmem_caches, but the > difference is not that significant, unless somebody still tries to use > Linux on very tiny systems (goes back to the previous point). > > Besides the smaller maintenance burden, removing SLOB would allow us to > do a useful API improvement - the ability to use kfree() for both > objects allocated by kmalloc() and kmem_cache_alloc(). Currently the > latter has to be freed by kmem_cache_free(), passing a kmem_cache > pointer in addition to the object pointer. With SLUB and SLAB, it is > however possible to use kfree() instead, as the kmalloc caches and the > rest of kmem_caches are the same and kfree() can lookup the kmem_cache > from object pointer easily for any of those. XFS has apparently did that > for years without anyone noticing it's broken on SLOB [3], and > legitimizing and expanding this would help some use cases beside XFS > (IIRC Matthew mentioned rcu-based freeing for example). > > However for SLOB to support kfree() on all allocations, it would need to > store object size of allocated objects (which it currently does only for > kmalloc() objects, prepending a size header to the object), but for > kmem_cache_alloc() allocations as well. This has been attempted in the > thread [3] but it bloats the memory usage, especially on architectures > with large ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN, where the prepended header basically > has to occupy the whole ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN block to be DMA safe. > There are ongoing efforts to reduce this minalign, but the memory > footprint would still increase, going against the purpose of SLOB, so > again it would be easier if we could just remove it. > > So with this thread I'm interested in hearing arguments/use cases for > keeping SLOB. There might be obviously users of SLOB whom this > conversation will not reach, so I assume the eventual next step would be > to deprecate it in a way that those users are notified when building a > new kernel and can raise their voice then. Is there a good proven way > how to do that for a config option like this one? > > Thanks, > Vlastimil > > [1] https://lpc.events/event/16/contributions/1272/ - slides in the > slabs.pdf linked there > [2] > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20211017135708.GA8442@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-ratio-313919.internal/#t > [3] > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20210930044202.GP2361455@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > >
