Re: [PATCH 1/9] mm: add generic adaptive large memory allocationAPIs

[KOSAKI Motohiro]

> Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > NAK, I really utterly dislike that inatomic argument. The alloc side
> > doesn't function in atomic context either. Please keep the thing
> > symmetric in that regards.
> 
> Excuse me. kmalloc(GFP_KERNEL) may sleep (and therefore cannot be used in
> atomic context). However, kfree() for memory allocated with kmalloc(GFP_KERNEL)
> never sleep (and therefore can be used in atomic context).
> Why kmalloc() and kfree() are NOT kept symmetric?

In kmalloc case, we need to consider both kmalloc(GFP_KERNEL)/kfree() pair and
kmalloc(GFP_ATOMIC)/kfree() pair. latter is mainly used on atomic context.
To make kfree() atomic help to keep the implementation simple.

But kvmalloc don't have GFP_ATOMIC feautre. that's big difference.



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