Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: kmalloc() alignment | Date | Tue, 6 Mar 2001 09:31:01 +0100 (MET) | From | (Rogier Wolff) |
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> Followup to: <20010306000652.A13992@excalibur.research.wombat.ie> > By author: Kenn Humborg <kenn@linux.ie> > In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > > > On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 11:41:12PM +0100, Manfred Spraul wrote: > > > > > > > > Does kmalloc() make any guarantees of the alignment of allocated > > > > blocks? Will the returned block always be 4-, 8- or 16-byte > > > > aligned, for example? > > > > > > > > > > 4-byte alignment is guaranteed on 32-bit cpus, 8-byte alignment on > > > 64-bit cpus. > > > > So, to summarise (for 32-bit CPUs): > > > > o Alan Cox & Manfred Spraul say 4-byte alignment is guaranteed. > > > > o If you need larger alignment, you need to alloc a larger space, > > round as necessary, and keep the original pointer for kfree() > > > > Maybe I'll just use get_free_pages, since it's a 64KB chunk that > > I need (and it's only a once-off).
My old kmalloc would actually use n+10 bytes if you request n bytes. As memory comes in pools of powers of two, if you request 64k, you would acutaly use 128k of memory. If you use "get_free_pages", you'll not have the overhead, and actually allocate the 64k you need.
I'm not sure what the slab stuff does...
Roger.
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