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Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 16:38:35 +0000 (GMT)
From: Tigran Aivazian <tigran@veritas.com>
To: "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>
cc: Linux kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: kmalloc() allocation.
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On Mon, 30 Oct 2000, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > So, if you don't need physically contiguous (and fast) allocations perhaps
> > you could make use of vmalloc()/vfree() instead? There must be also some
> > "exotic" allocation APIs like bootmem but I know nothing of them so I stop
> > here.
> 
> Okay. Looks like I need a linked-list so I can use noncontiguous memory.

Just to remind, I was talking of physically and not just virtually
contiguous. vmalloc will still give you a virtually-contiguous chunk. But
if by "I need a linked-list" you mean that each node of the list may be
talking to some hardware but the hardware won't know about the whole list,
then you still need to use physically-contiguous allocator like
__get_free_pages() for each data node, i.e. if your hardware actually
needs physically contiguous chunk to talk to. Also, in this case, using
vmalloc() to allocate just the "linkage/admin overhead" is silly, just
using kmalloc or even creating a private slab object cache is probably a
better idea.

Regards,
Tigran

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