This is a new slab allocator which was motivated by the complexity of the
existing code in mm/slab.c. It attempts to address a variety of concerns
with the existing implementation.
A. Management of object queues
A particular concern was the complex management of the numerous object
queues in SLAB. SLUB has no such queues. Instead we dedicate a slab for
each allocating CPU and use objects from a slab directly instead of
queueing them up.
B. Storage overhead of object queues
SLAB Object queues exist per node, per CPU. The alien cache queue even
has a queue array that contain a queue for each processor on each
node. For very large systems the number of queues and the number of
objects that may be caught in those queues grows exponentially. On our
systems with 1k nodes / processors we have several gigabytes just tied up
for storing references to objects for those queues This does not include
the objects that could be on those queues. One fears that the whole
memory of the machine could one day be consumed by those queues.
C. SLAB meta data overhead
SLAB has overhead at the beginning of each slab. This means that data
cannot be naturally aligned at the beginning of a slab block. SLUB keeps
all meta data in the corresponding page_struct. Objects can be naturally
aligned in the slab. F.e. a 128 byte object will be aligned at 128 byte
boundaries and can fit tightly into a 4k page with no bytes left over.
SLAB cannot do this.
D. SLAB has a complex cache reaper
SLUB does not need a cache reaper for UP systems. On SMP systems
the per CPU slab may be pushed back into partial list but that
operation is simple and does not require an iteration over a list
of objects. SLAB expires per CPU, shared and alien object queues
during cache reaping which may cause strange hold offs.
E. SLAB has complex NUMA policy layer support
SLUB pushes NUMA policy handling into the page allocator. This means that
allocation is coarser (SLUB does interleave on a page level) but that
situation was also present before 2.6.13. SLABs application of
policies to individual slab objects allocated in SLAB is
certainly a performance concern due to the frequent references to
memory policies which may lead a sequence of objects to come from
one node after another. SLUB will get a slab full of objects
from one node and then will switch to the next.
F. Reduction of the size of partial slab lists
SLAB has per node partial lists. This means that over time a large
number of partial slabs may accumulate on those lists. These can
only be reused if allocator occur on specific nodes. SLUB has a global
pool of partial slabs and will consume slabs from that pool to
decrease fragmentation.
G. Tunables
SLAB has sophisticated tuning abilities for each slab cache. One can
manipulate the queue sizes in detail. However, filling the queues still
requires the uses of the spin lock to check out slabs. SLUB has a global
parameter (min_slab_order) for tuning. Increasing the minimum slab
order can decrease the locking overhead. The bigger the slab order the
less motions of pages between per CPU and partial lists occur and the
better SLUB will be scaling.
G. Slab merging
We often have slab caches with similar parameters. SLUB detects those
on boot up and merges them into the corresponding general caches. This
leads to more effective memory use. About 50% of all caches can
be eliminated through slab merging. This will also decrease
slab fragmentation because partial allocated slabs can be filled
up again. Slab merging can be switched off by specifying
slub_nomerge on boot up.
Note that merging can expose heretofore unknown bugs in the kernel
because corrupted objects may now be placed differently and corrupt
differing neighboring objects. Enable sanity checks to find those.
H. Diagnostics
The current slab diagnostics are difficult to use and require a
recompilation of the kernel. SLUB contains debugging code that
is always available (but is kept out of the hot code paths).
SLUB diagnostics can be enabled via the "slab_debug" option.
Parameters can be specified to select a single or a group of
slab caches for diagnostics. This means that the system is running
with the usual performance and it is much more likely that
race conditions can be reproduced.
I. Resiliency
If basic sanity checks are on then SLUB is capable of detecting
common error conditions and recover as best as possible to allow the
system to continue.
J. Tracing
Tracing can be enabled via the slab_debug=T,<slabcache> option
during boot. SLUB will then protocol all actions on that slabcache
and dump the object contents on free.
K. On demand DMA cache creation.
Generally DMA caches are not needed. If a kmalloc is used with
__GFP_DMA then just create this single slabcache that is needed.
For systems that have no ZONE_DMA requirement the support is
completely eliminated.
L. Performance increase
Some benchmarks have shown speed improvements on kernbench in the
range of 5-10%. The locking overhead of slub is based on the
underlying base allocation size. If we can reliably allocate
larger order pages then it is possible to increase slub
performance much further. The anti-fragmentation patches may
enable further performance increases.
Tested on:
i386 UP + SMP, x86_64 UP + SMP + NUMA emulation, IA64 NUMA + Simulator
SLUB Boot options
slub_nomerge Disable merging of slabs
slub_min_order=x Require a minimum order for slab caches. This
increases the managed chunk size and therefore
reduces meta data and locking overhead.
slub_min_objects=x Mininum objects per slab. Default is 8.
slub_max_order=x Avoid generating slabs larger than order specified.
slub_debug Enable all diagnostics for all caches
slub_debug=<options> Enable selective options for all caches
slub_debug=<o>,<cache> Enable selective options for a certain set of
caches
Available Debug options
F Double Free checking, sanity and resiliency
R Red zoning
P Object / padding poisoning
U Track last free / alloc
T Trace all allocs / frees (only use for individual slabs).
To use SLUB: Apply this patch and then select SLUB as the default slab
allocator.
[hugh@veritas.com: fix an oops-causing locking error]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: various stupid cleanups and small fixes]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This patch simply defines CONFIG_ZONE_DMA for all arches. We later do special
things with CONFIG_ZONE_DMA after the VM and an arch are prepared to work
without ZONE_DMA.
CONFIG_ZONE_DMA can be defined in two ways depending on how an architecture
handles ISA DMA.
First if CONFIG_GENERIC_ISA_DMA is set by the arch then we know that the arch
needs ZONE_DMA because ISA DMA devices are supported. We can catch this in
mm/Kconfig and do not need to modify arch code.
Second, arches may use ZONE_DMA in an unknown way. We set CONFIG_ZONE_DMA for
all arches that do not set CONFIG_GENERIC_ISA_DMA in order to insure backwards
compatibility. The arches may later undefine ZONE_DMA if their arch code has
been verified to not depend on ZONE_DMA.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com>
Cc: Kyle McMartin <kyle@mcmartin.ca>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@debian.org>
Cc: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@steeleye.com>
Cc: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This facility provides three entry points:
ilog2() Log base 2 of unsigned long
ilog2_u32() Log base 2 of u32
ilog2_u64() Log base 2 of u64
These facilities can either be used inside functions on dynamic data:
int do_something(long q)
{
...;
y = ilog2(x)
...;
}
Or can be used to statically initialise global variables with constant values:
unsigned n = ilog2(27);
When performing static initialisation, the compiler will report "error:
initializer element is not constant" if asked to take a log of zero or of
something not reducible to a constant. They treat negative numbers as
unsigned.
When not dealing with a constant, they fall back to using fls() which permits
them to use arch-specific log calculation instructions - such as BSR on
x86/x86_64 or SCAN on FRV - if available.
[akpm@osdl.org: MMC fix]
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Wojtek Kaniewski <wojtekka@toxygen.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Permit kmalloc() to make allocations of up to 32MB if so configured. This
may be useful under NOMMU conditions where vmalloc() can't do this.
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Permit __do_IRQ() to be dispensed with based on a configuration option.
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Make the FRV arch use the generic IRQ code rather than having its own
routines for doing so.
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Use the generic time stuff for FRV.
Signed-off-by: John Stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>
Signed-Off-By: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
CONFIG_TIME_LOW_RES is a temporary way for architectures to signal that
they simply return xtime in do_gettimeoffset(). In this corner-case we
want to round up by resolution when starting a relative timer, to avoid
short timeouts. This will go away with the GTOD framework.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
It seems the "make UID16 support optional" patch was checked when it
edited the -tiny tree some time ago, but it wasn't checked whether it
still matches the current situation when it was submitted for inclusion
in -mm. This patch fixes the following bugs:
- ARCH_S390X does no longer exist, nowadays this has to be expressed
through (S390 && 64BIT)
- in five architecture specific Kconfig files the UID16 options
weren't removed
Additionally, it changes the fragile negative dependencies of UID16 to
positive dependencies (new architectures are more likely to not require
UID16 support).
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Acked-by: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Force the 8230 serial driver to be built in if the on-CPU UARTs are to be
used. It can't be used as a module because the arch setup needs to call into
it.
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Fix PCMCIA configuration for FRV by including the stock PCMCIA configuration
description file.
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Create a new top-level menu named "Networking" thus moving
net related options and protocol selection way from the drivers
menu and up on the top-level where they belong.
To implement this all architectures has to source "net/Kconfig" before
drivers/*/Kconfig in their Kconfig file. This change has been
implemented for all architectures.
Device drivers for ordinary NIC's are still to be found
in the Device Drivers section, but Bluetooth, IrDA and ax25
are located with their corresponding menu entries under the new
networking menu item.
Signed-off-by: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
For all architectures, this just means that you'll see a "Memory Model"
choice in your architecture menu. For those that implement DISCONTIGMEM,
you may eventually want to make your ARCH_DISCONTIGMEM_ENABLE a "def_bool
y" and make your users select DISCONTIGMEM right out of the new choice
menu. The only disadvantage might be if you have some specific things that
you need in your help option to explain something about DISCONTIGMEM.
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
