> Followup to: <20010306000652.A13992@excalibur.research.wombat.ie>
> By author: Kenn Humborg <kenn@linux.ie>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 11:41:12PM +0100, Manfred Spraul wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Does kmalloc() make any guarantees of the alignment of allocated
> > > > blocks? Will the returned block always be 4-, 8- or 16-byte
> > > > aligned, for example?
> > > >
> > >
> > > 4-byte alignment is guaranteed on 32-bit cpus, 8-byte alignment on
> > > 64-bit cpus.
> >
> > So, to summarise (for 32-bit CPUs):
> >
> > o Alan Cox & Manfred Spraul say 4-byte alignment is guaranteed.
> >
> > o If you need larger alignment, you need to alloc a larger space,
> > round as necessary, and keep the original pointer for kfree()
> >
> > Maybe I'll just use get_free_pages, since it's a 64KB chunk that
> > I need (and it's only a once-off).
My old kmalloc would actually use n+10 bytes if you request n bytes.
As memory comes in pools of powers of two, if you request 64k, you
would acutaly use 128k of memory. If you use "get_free_pages", you'll
not have the overhead, and actually allocate the 64k you need.
I'm not sure what the slab stuff does...
Roger.
-- ** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* * There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. * There are also old, bald pilots. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 07 2001 - 21:00:19 EST