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Is the slab allocator used in the Linux kernel?
It is a slab allocator which is very similar in many respects to the general kernel allocator used in Solaris [MM01]. Linux’s implementation is heavily based on the first slab allocator paper by Bonwick [Bon94] with many improvements that bear a close resemblance to those described in his later paper [BA01].
Where is the information stored in slab allocator?
All information describing a cache is stored in a struct kmem_cache_sdeclared in mm/slab.c. This is an extremely large struct and so will be described in parts.
Which is the slab allocator for DMA devices?
One cache set is suitable for use with DMA devices. These caches are called size-N and size-N(DMA) where Nis the size of the allocation, and a function kmalloc()(see Section 8.4.1) is provided for allocating them. With this, the single greatest problem with the low level page allocator is addressed.
How is slab memory management used in Linux?
Better hardware cache usage – by aligining objects to start at different offsets in different slabs so that interference between cache lines can be reduced. This is based on assumption that we have physically indexed cache.
What are the aims of the slab allocator?
The slab allocator has three principle aims: The allocation of small blocks of memory to help eliminate internal fragmentation that would be otherwise caused by the buddy system; The caching of commonly used objects so that the system does not waste time allocating, initialising and destroying objects.
How many slabs are there in KMEM _ cache?
Thus, the kmem_cache object holds 3 lists of its slabs, gathered in 3 flavours : Empty slabs : these slabs do not contain an in-use object. Partial slabs : these slabs contain objects currently used but there is still memory area that can hold new objects. Full slabs : these slabs contains objects being used and cannot host new objects (full …).