[patch-2.3.40-pre6] kzalloc() (ala kmem_zalloc() of SVR4)

[Jeff Garzik]

Tigran Aivazian wrote:
> 
> Hi Linus,
> 
> a common code sequence of calling kmalloc() and then memset(p,0,size) can
> be optimized into a single exported interface called kzalloc() like it is
> done on other systems (kmem_zalloc()). This is a simple and harmless
> optimization - please consider it:
> 
>   http://www.ocston.org/~tigran/patches/kzalloc-2.3.40-p6.patch
> 
> I only converted a couple of places (including BFS) to use kzallo() -
> there is surely plenty more cases that can be improved.

I proposed something along these lines several months ago, poke around
for the thread.  While I agree with the patch, because it will save me a
few lines of code here and there, an idea that came out of the previous
discussion is also worth considering -- zeroing pages during system idle
time, and then handing those out from kzalloc() (or
kmalloc(GFP_ZERO|GFP_xxx) or whatever)

-- 
Jeff Garzik         | Andre the Giant has a posse.
Building 1024       |
MandrakeSoft, Inc.  |

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