Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 04:35:36 -0800 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> To: Michael Hancock <michaelh@cet.co.jp> Cc: proff@suburbia.net, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SLAB stuff, and applications to current net code (fwd) Message-ID: <199701261235.EAA06772@root.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 26 Jan 1997 20:36:44 %2B0900." <Pine.SV4.3.95.970126202624.21926A-100000@parkplace.cet.co.jp>
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>On Sun, 26 Jan 1997 proff@suburbia.net wrote: > >> Can anyone inform me what a SLAB allocator is, and if so, would freebsd >> benefit from one? >> > >It's a chunk of memory that you put multiple kernel objects of the same >type into. We have a modified mach zone allocator. They're both type >stable memory allocators. The memory allocator in BSD is *not* type-stable. >Maybe John or David will explain how our allocator differs from the >original zone allocator in 4.4BSD borrowed from Mach. There isn't a lot of difference. Just some performance improvements. >I not sure how much benefit the SLAB allocator would offer over what we >have. There's some extra overhead in maintaining a SLAB. > >BTW, SLAB is used in Solaris. The allocator in BSD is designed to be as fast as possible and trades space efficiency for performance. I'm very skeptical that a SLAB allocator would be any faster than the current allocation algorithm, although it would likely be more space efficient. -DG David Greenman Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project
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