Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758990AbYGaBNN (ORCPT ); Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:13:13 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755464AbYGaBMq (ORCPT ); Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:12:46 -0400 Received: from waste.org ([66.93.16.53]:54520 "EHLO waste.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755172AbYGaBMp (ORCPT ); Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:12:45 -0400 Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] greatly reduce SLOB external fragmentation From: Matt Mackall To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Pekka J Enberg , Christoph Lameter , Ingo Molnar , Hugh Dickins , Andi Kleen , Peter Zijlstra , Linux Kernel Mailing List , vegard.nossum@gmail.com, hannes@saeurebad.de In-Reply-To: References: <84144f020801021109v78e06c6k10d26af0e330fc85@mail.gmail.com> <1199314218.4497.109.camel@cinder.waste.org> <20080103085239.GA10813@elte.hu> <1199378818.8274.25.camel@cinder.waste.org> <1199419890.4608.77.camel@cinder.waste.org> <1199641910.8215.28.camel@cinder.waste.org> <1199906151.6245.57.camel@cinder.waste.org> <1199919548.6245.74.camel@cinder.waste.org> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:09:43 -0500 Message-Id: <1217466583.18911.226.camel@calx> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.12.3 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1288 Lines: 35 On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 15:00 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, Pekka J Enberg wrote: > > > > Subject: [PATCH] binalloc: best-fit allocation with binning > > From: Pekka Enberg > > Shoot me now. > > > As suggested by Linus, > > I'm happy to hear that the thing worked, but I'm not sure how happy I > should be about yet _another_ allocator. Will it ever end? I think you can relax: the logical limit is probably two. We want an allocator that is both optimally fast and scalable on one end and optimally space-efficient on the other end and we're unlikely to find one allocator that is simultaneously both. But I don't think there's much call for things in the middle of the spectrum. So if this new one (which I haven't looked at yet) beats SLOB in space usage and simplicity, I'll be happy to see it replace SLOB. Finally getting rid of SLAB is a much trickier proposition because SLUB still loses in a few important corner cases. -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/