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

[Horst von Brand]

Jeff Garzik <jgarzik en mandrakesoft.com> said:

[...]

> 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)

What pages would you clear? Linux uses every bit of memory it gets its
hands on, and pages that are written out stay around in case their contents
are needed later. So I see very little oportunity for scavenging pages for
zeroing (perhaps just stuff that went to closed/unmounted filesystems).
-- 
Horst von Brand                             vonbrand en sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Viña del Mar, Chile                               +56 32 672616


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