[PATCH] slob: introduce the SLOB allocator
configurable replacement for slab allocator
This adds a CONFIG_SLAB option under CONFIG_EMBEDDED. When CONFIG_SLAB is
disabled, the kernel falls back to using the 'SLOB' allocator.
SLOB is a traditional K&R/UNIX allocator with a SLAB emulation layer,
similar to the original Linux kmalloc allocator that SLAB replaced. It's
signicantly smaller code and is more memory efficient. But like all
similar allocators, it scales poorly and suffers from fragmentation more
than SLAB, so it's only appropriate for small systems.
It's been tested extensively in the Linux-tiny tree. I've also
stress-tested it with make -j 8 compiles on a 3G SMP+PREEMPT box (not
recommended).
Here's a comparison for otherwise identical builds, showing SLOB saving
nearly half a megabyte of RAM:
$ size vmlinux*
text data bss dec hex filename
3336372 529360 190812 4056544 3de5e0 vmlinux-slab
3323208 527948 190684 4041840 3dac70 vmlinux-slob
$ size mm/{slab,slob}.o
text data bss dec hex filename
13221 752 48 14021 36c5 mm/slab.o
1896 52 8 1956 7a4 mm/slob.o
/proc/meminfo:
SLAB SLOB delta
MemTotal: 27964 kB 27980 kB +16 kB
MemFree: 24596 kB 25092 kB +496 kB
Buffers: 36 kB 36 kB 0 kB
Cached: 1188 kB 1188 kB 0 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB 0 kB 0 kB
Active: 608 kB 600 kB -8 kB
Inactive: 808 kB 812 kB +4 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB 0 kB 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB 0 kB 0 kB
LowTotal: 27964 kB 27980 kB +16 kB
LowFree: 24596 kB 25092 kB +496 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB 0 kB 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB 0 kB 0 kB
Dirty: 4 kB 12 kB +8 kB
Writeback: 0 kB 0 kB 0 kB
Mapped: 560 kB 556 kB -4 kB
Slab: 1756 kB 0 kB -1756 kB
CommitLimit: 13980 kB 13988 kB +8 kB
Committed_AS: 4208 kB 4208 kB 0 kB
PageTables: 28 kB 28 kB 0 kB
VmallocTotal: 1007312 kB 1007312 kB 0 kB
VmallocUsed: 48 kB 48 kB 0 kB
VmallocChunk: 1007264 kB 1007264 kB 0 kB
(this work has been sponsored in part by CELF)
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Fix 32-bitness bugs in mm/slob.c.
Signed-off-by: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig
index ba42f37..0c9932f 100644
--- a/init/Kconfig
+++ b/init/Kconfig
@@ -380,6 +380,15 @@
no dummy operations need be executed.
Zero means use compiler's default.
+config SLAB
+ default y
+ bool "Use full SLAB allocator" if EMBEDDED
+ help
+ Disabling this replaces the advanced SLAB allocator and
+ kmalloc support with the drastically simpler SLOB allocator.
+ SLOB is more space efficient but does not scale well and is
+ more susceptible to fragmentation.
+
endmenu # General setup
config TINY_SHMEM
@@ -391,6 +400,10 @@
default 0 if BASE_FULL
default 1 if !BASE_FULL
+config SLOB
+ default !SLAB
+ bool
+
menu "Loadable module support"
config MODULES