In message <20030505014729.5db76f70.akpm@digeo.com> you write:
> Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > This is the kmalloc_percpu patch.
>
> How does it work? What restrictions does it have, and
> what compromises were made?
>
> +#define PERCPU_POOL_SIZE 32768
>
> What's this?
OK. It has a size restriction: PERCPU_POOL_SIZE is the maximum total
kmalloc_percpu + static DECLARE_PER_CPU you'll get, ever. This is the
main downside. It's allocated at boot.
The __alloc_percpu allocator is extremely space efficient, by not
insisting on cache-line aligning everything: __alloc_percpu(SIZE)
overhead is sizeof(int), plus SIZE bytes (rounded up to alignment
requirements) removed from per-cpu pool.
The allocator is fairly slow: they're not expected to be thrown around
like candy.
> The current implementation of kmalloc_per_cpu() turned out to be fairly
> disappointing because of the number of derefs which were necessary to get at
> the data in fastpaths. How does this implementation compare?
It uses the same method as the static ones, so it's a single addition
of __per_cpu_offset (assuming arch doesn't override implementation).
This is a requirement for modules to use them (which was my aim: the
other side effects are cream).
Hope that clarifies,
Rusty.
-- Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell. - 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 May 07 2003 - 22:00:24 EST