1. 03 8月, 2011 1 次提交
    • H
      lib, Make gen_pool memory allocator lockless · 7f184275
      Huang Ying 提交于
      This version of the gen_pool memory allocator supports lockless
      operation.
      
      This makes it safe to use in NMI handlers and other special
      unblockable contexts that could otherwise deadlock on locks.  This is
      implemented by using atomic operations and retries on any conflicts.
      The disadvantage is that there may be livelocks in extreme cases.  For
      better scalability, one gen_pool allocator can be used for each CPU.
      
      The lockless operation only works if there is enough memory available.
      If new memory is added to the pool a lock has to be still taken.  So
      any user relying on locklessness has to ensure that sufficient memory
      is preallocated.
      
      The basic atomic operation of this allocator is cmpxchg on long.  On
      architectures that don't have NMI-safe cmpxchg implementation, the
      allocator can NOT be used in NMI handler.  So code uses the allocator
      in NMI handler should depend on CONFIG_ARCH_HAVE_NMI_SAFE_CMPXCHG.
      Signed-off-by: NHuang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
      Reviewed-by: NAndi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
      Reviewed-by: NMathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
      Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
      Signed-off-by: NLen Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
      7f184275
  2. 25 5月, 2011 2 次提交
  3. 02 10月, 2006 1 次提交
  4. 23 6月, 2006 1 次提交
  5. 22 6月, 2005 1 次提交
    • J
      [PATCH] ia64 uncached alloc · f14f75b8
      Jes Sorensen 提交于
      This patch contains the ia64 uncached page allocator and the generic
      allocator (genalloc).  The uncached allocator was formerly part of the SN2
      mspec driver but there are several other users of it so it has been split
      off from the driver.
      
      The generic allocator can be used by device driver to manage special memory
      etc.  The generic allocator is based on the allocator from the sym53c8xx_2
      driver.
      
      Various users on ia64 needs uncached memory.  The SGI SN architecture requires
      it for inter-partition communication between partitions within a large NUMA
      cluster.  The specific user for this is the XPC code.  Another application is
      large MPI style applications which use it for synchronization, on SN this can
      be done using special 'fetchop' operations but it also benefits non SN
      hardware which may use regular uncached memory for this purpose.  Performance
      of doing this through uncached vs cached memory is pretty substantial.  This
      is handled by the mspec driver which I will push out in a seperate patch.
      
      Rather than creating a specific allocator for just uncached memory I came up
      with genalloc which is a generic purpose allocator that can be used by device
      drivers and other subsystems as they please.  For instance to handle onboard
      device memory.  It was derived from the sym53c7xx_2 driver's allocator which
      is also an example of a potential user (I am refraining from modifying sym2
      right now as it seems to have been under fairly heavy development recently).
      
      On ia64 memory has various properties within a granule, ie.  it isn't safe to
      access memory as uncached within the same granule as currently has memory
      accessed in cached mode.  The regular system therefore doesn't utilize memory
      in the lower granules which is mixed in with device PAL code etc.  The
      uncached driver walks the EFI memmap and pulls out the spill uncached pages
      and sticks them into the uncached pool.  Only after these chunks have been
      utilized, will it start converting regular cached memory into uncached memory.
      Hence the reason for the EFI related code additions.
      Signed-off-by: NJes Sorensen <jes@wildopensource.com>
      Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
      Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
      f14f75b8