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[PATCH] slob: introduce the SLOB allocator

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configurable replacement for slab allocator

This adds a CONFIG_SLAB option under CONFIG_EMBEDDED.  When CONFIG_SLAB is
disabled, the kernel falls back to using the 'SLOB' allocator.

SLOB is a traditional K&R/UNIX allocator with a SLAB emulation layer,
similar to the original Linux kmalloc allocator that SLAB replaced.  It's
signicantly smaller code and is more memory efficient.  But like all
similar allocators, it scales poorly and suffers from fragmentation more
than SLAB, so it's only appropriate for small systems.

It's been tested extensively in the Linux-tiny tree.  I've also
stress-tested it with make -j 8 compiles on a 3G SMP+PREEMPT box (not
recommended).

Here's a comparison for otherwise identical builds, showing SLOB saving
nearly half a megabyte of RAM:

$ size vmlinux*
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
3336372  529360  190812 4056544  3de5e0 vmlinux-slab
3323208  527948  190684 4041840  3dac70 vmlinux-slob

$ size mm/{slab,slob}.o
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
  13221     752      48   14021    36c5 mm/slab.o
   1896      52       8    1956     7a4 mm/slob.o

/proc/meminfo:
                  SLAB          SLOB      delta
MemTotal:        27964 kB      27980 kB     +16 kB
MemFree:         24596 kB      25092 kB    +496 kB
Buffers:            36 kB         36 kB       0 kB
Cached:           1188 kB       1188 kB       0 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB          0 kB       0 kB
Active:            608 kB        600 kB      -8 kB
Inactive:          808 kB        812 kB      +4 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB          0 kB       0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB          0 kB       0 kB
LowTotal:        27964 kB      27980 kB     +16 kB
LowFree:         24596 kB      25092 kB    +496 kB
SwapTotal:           0 kB          0 kB       0 kB
SwapFree:            0 kB          0 kB       0 kB
Dirty:               4 kB         12 kB      +8 kB
Writeback:           0 kB          0 kB       0 kB
Mapped:            560 kB        556 kB      -4 kB
Slab:             1756 kB          0 kB   -1756 kB
CommitLimit:     13980 kB      13988 kB      +8 kB
Committed_AS:     4208 kB       4208 kB       0 kB
PageTables:         28 kB         28 kB       0 kB
VmallocTotal:  1007312 kB    1007312 kB       0 kB
VmallocUsed:        48 kB         48 kB       0 kB
VmallocChunk:  1007264 kB    1007264 kB       0 kB

(this work has been sponsored in part by CELF)

From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

   Fix 32-bitness bugs in mm/slob.c.

Signed-off-by: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This commit is contained in:
Matt Mackall
2006-01-08 01:01:45 -08:00
committed by Linus Torvalds
parent 30992c97ae
commit 10cef60295
5 changed files with 440 additions and 1 deletions
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13
init/Kconfig
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@@ -380,6 +380,15 @@ config CC_ALIGN_JUMPS
no dummy operations need be executed.
Zero means use compiler's default.
config SLAB
default y
bool "Use full SLAB allocator" if EMBEDDED
help
Disabling this replaces the advanced SLAB allocator and
kmalloc support with the drastically simpler SLOB allocator.
SLOB is more space efficient but does not scale well and is
more susceptible to fragmentation.
endmenu # General setup
config TINY_SHMEM
@@ -391,6 +400,10 @@ config BASE_SMALL
default 0 if BASE_FULL
default 1 if !BASE_FULL
config SLOB
default !SLAB
bool
menu "Loadable module support"
config MODULES