linux-toradex.git/include/linux/slab.h, branch v2.6.22.13

slab allocators: MAX_ORDER one off fix

2007-06-24T15:59:12+00:00

MAX_ORDER is the first order that is not possible.

Use MAX_ORDER - 1 to calculate the larges possible object size in slab.h

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Slab allocators: define common size limitations

2007-05-17T12:23:04+00:00

Currently we have a maze of configuration variables that determine the
maximum slab size.  Worst of all it seems to vary between SLAB and SLUB.

So define a common maximum size for kmalloc.  For conveniences sake we use
the maximum size ever supported which is 32 MB.  We limit the maximum size
to a lower limit if MAX_ORDER does not allow such large allocations.

For many architectures this patch will have the effect of adding large
kmalloc sizes.  x86_64 adds 5 new kmalloc sizes.  So a small amount of
memory will be needed for these caches (contemporary SLAB has dynamically
sizeable node and cpu structure so the waste is less than in the past)

Most architectures will then be able to allocate object with sizes up to
MAX_ORDER.  We have had repeated breakage (in fact whenever we doubled the
number of supported processors) on IA64 because one or the other struct
grew beyond what the slab allocators supported.  This will avoid future
issues and f.e.  avoid fixes for 2k and 4k cpu support.

CONFIG_LARGE_ALLOCS is no longer necessary so drop it.

It fixes sparc64 with SLAB.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: "David S. Miller" 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Remove SLAB_CTOR_CONSTRUCTOR

2007-05-17T12:23:04+00:00

SLAB_CTOR_CONSTRUCTOR is always specified. No point in checking it.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: David Howells 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Cc: Steven French 
Cc: Michael Halcrow 
Cc: OGAWA Hirofumi 
Cc: Miklos Szeredi 
Cc: Steven Whitehouse 
Cc: Roman Zippel 
Cc: David Woodhouse 
Cc: Dave Kleikamp 
Cc: Trond Myklebust 
Cc: "J. Bruce Fields" 
Cc: Anton Altaparmakov 
Cc: Mark Fasheh 
Cc: Paul Mackerras 
Cc: Christoph Hellwig 
Cc: Jan Kara 
Cc: David Chinner 
Cc: "David S. Miller" 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

SLAB: Move two remaining SLAB specific definitions to slab_def.h

2007-05-17T12:23:03+00:00

Two definitions remained in slab.h that are particular to the SLAB allocator.
Move to slab_def.h

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

slab allocators: Remove SLAB_CTOR_ATOMIC

2007-05-07T19:12:57+00:00

SLAB_CTOR atomic is never used which is no surprise since I cannot imagine
that one would want to do something serious in a constructor or destructor.
 In particular given that the slab allocators run with interrupts disabled.
 Actions in constructors and destructors are by their nature very limited
and usually do not go beyond initializing variables and list operations.

(The i386 pgd ctor and dtors do take a spinlock in constructor and
destructor.....  I think that is the furthest we go at this point.)

There is no flag passed to the destructor so removing SLAB_CTOR_ATOMIC also
establishes a certain symmetry.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

slab allocators: Remove SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL flag

2007-05-07T19:12:57+00:00

I have never seen a use of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL.  It is only supported by
SLAB.

I think its purpose was to have a callback after an object has been freed
to verify that the state is the constructor state again?  The callback is
performed before each freeing of an object.

I would think that it is much easier to check the object state manually
before the free.  That also places the check near the code object
manipulation of the object.

Also the SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL callback is only performed if the kernel was
compiled with SLAB debugging on.  If there would be code in a constructor
handling SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL then it would have to be conditional on
SLAB_DEBUG otherwise it would just be dead code.  But there is no such code
in the kernel.  I think SLUB_DEBUG_INITIAL is too problematic to make real
use of, difficult to understand and there are easier ways to accomplish the
same effect (i.e.  add debug code before kfree).

There is a related flag SLAB_CTOR_VERIFY that is frequently checked to be
clear in fs inode caches.  Remove the pointless checks (they would even be
pointless without removeal of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL) from the fs constructors.

This is the last slab flag that SLUB did not support.  Remove the check for
unimplemented flags from SLUB.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

KMEM_CACHE(): simplify slab cache creation

2007-05-07T19:12:55+00:00

This patch provides a new macro

KMEM_CACHE(, )

to simplify slab creation. KMEM_CACHE creates a slab with the name of the
struct, with the size of the struct and with the alignment of the struct.
Additional slab flags may be specified if necessary.

Example

struct test_slab {
	int a,b,c;
	struct list_head;
} __cacheline_aligned_in_smp;

test_slab_cache = KMEM_CACHE(test_slab, SLAB_PANIC)

will create a new slab named "test_slab" of the size sizeof(struct
test_slab) and aligned to the alignment of test slab.  If it fails then we
panic.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

slab allocators: Remove obsolete SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN

2007-05-07T19:12:55+00:00

This patch was recently posted to lkml and acked by Pekka.

The flag SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN is

1. Never checked by SLAB at all.

2. A duplicate of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for SLUB

3. Fulfills the role of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for SLOB.

The only remaining use is in sparc64 and ppc64 and their use there
reflects some earlier role that the slab flag once may have had. If
its specified then SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN is also specified.

The flag is confusing, inconsistent and has no purpose.

Remove it.

Acked-by: Pekka Enberg 
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

SLUB core

2007-05-07T19:12:53+00:00

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, 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=	Enable selective options for all caches
slub_debug=,	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 
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm/slab.c: proper prototypes

2007-05-07T19:12:52+00:00

Add proper prototypes in include/linux/slab.h.

Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds