From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760446AbZAWQCw (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:02:52 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756818AbZAWQCn (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:02:43 -0500 Received: from smtp.ultrahosting.com ([74.213.174.254]:37418 "EHLO smtp.ultrahosting.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756702AbZAWQCm (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:02:42 -0500 Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:59:17 -0500 (EST) From: Christoph Lameter X-X-Sender: cl@qirst.com To: Nick Piggin cc: Pekka Enberg , yanmin_zhang@linux.intel.com, Andi Kleen , Matthew Wilcox , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] SLUB: revert direct page allocator pass through In-Reply-To: <200901240241.06670.nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> Message-ID: References: <84144f020901230716n3f106034x8a10463b411c9a9b@mail.gmail.com> <200901240241.06670.nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (DEB 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 24 Jan 2009, Nick Piggin wrote: > Page allocator is never going to be as fast as slab allocator, for > issues I explained a long time ago. Not to say it can't be improved, > just stating facts. Why not? Remember the discussion we had a while ago. You can bring the pages into a state where minimal manipulations are required for alloc free and avoid all the checks in the hot paths. The SLUB method could be used taking a big contiguous chunk and then issueing page size portions of it. That could be quite fast. Or if you prefer order-0. Do a single linked list like SLQB does.