On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 2:06 AM, Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > This is a series of patches that extracts common functionality from > slab allocators into a common code base. The intend is to standardize > as much as possible of the allocator behavior while keeping the > distinctive features of each allocator which are mostly due to their > storage format and serialization approaches. > > This patchset makes a beginning by extracting common functionality in > kmem_cache_create() and kmem_cache_destroy(). However, there are > numerous other areas where such work could be beneficial: > > 1. Extract the sysfs support from SLUB and make it common. That way > all allocators have a common sysfs API and are handleable in the same > way regardless of the allocator chose. > > 2. Extract the error reporting and checking from SLUB and make > it available for all allocators. This means that all allocators > will gain the resiliency and error handling capabilties. > > 3. Extract the memory hotplug and cpu hotplug handling. It seems that > SLAB may be more sophisticated here. Having common code here will > make it easier to maintain the special code. > > 4. Extract the aliasing capability of SLUB. This will enable fast > slab creation without creating too many additional slab caches. > The arrays of caches of varying sizes in numerous subsystems > do not cause the creation of numerous slab caches. Storage > density is increased and the cache footprint is reduced. > > Ultimately it is to be hoped that the special code for each allocator > shrinks to a mininum. This will also make it easier to make modification > to allocators. > > In the far future one could envision that the current allocators will > just become storage algorithms that can be chosen based on the need of > the subsystem. F.e. > > Cpu cache dependend performance = Bonwick allocator (SLAB) > Minimal cycle count and cache footprint = SLUB > Maximum storage density = K&R allocator (SLOB) I've created a 'slab/common-for-groups' branch for this and queued it for linux-next. I had to revert the sysfs patch because it caused warnings during boot: https://github.com/penberg/linux/commit/aac3a1664aba429f47c70edfc76ee10fcd808471 I'd like to keep it append-only from now on please send incremental patches on top of the branch. Thanks! Pekka -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>