Re: bootmem allocator

From: Cyrill Gorcunov
Date: Tue Apr 08 2008 - 09:58:32 EST


[Andi Kleen - Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 10:12:06AM +0200]
| On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 10:04:46AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
| >
| > * Andi Kleen <andi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
| >
| > > > hm, bootmem allocator is supposed to clear memory. We have a couple
| > > > of places that rely on that.
| > >
| > > I was actually considering to change that for the GB pages hugetlbfs
| > > patchkit, because memset for 1G is a little slow and not needed (will
| > > be cleared later anyways) and it might be a problem for very large
| > > systems with a lot of such pages at boot.
| >
| > changing the default behavior of bootmem alloc to be non-clearing is a
| > really bad idea that will only cause unrobustness. The proper approach
| > is to add an _opt-in_ API that does not clear memory
|
| I was considering that too, but we have so many weird variants of bootmem
| with opt in and opt out and even combinations of both now that the whole thing
| is starting to look really pear shaped (I admit I added some of them
| in the past myself but I'm not proud). Would be a great project for
| someone to consolidate that all a bit.
|
| -Andi
|

OK, thanks to all of you

- Cyrill -
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