Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 11 Nov 2003 10:24:46 -0800 (PST) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: 2.6 /proc/interrupts fails on systems with many CPUs |
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On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Martin J. Bligh wrote: > > I think it'd make more sense to only use vmalloc when it's explicitly > too big for kmalloc - or simply switch on num_online_cpus > 100 or > whatever a sensible cutoff is (ie nobody but you would ever see this ;-))
No, please please please don't do these things.
vmalloc() is NOT SOMETHING YOU SHOULD EVER USE! It's only valid for when you _need_ a big array, and you don't have any choice. It's slow, and it's a very restricted resource: it's a global resource that is literally restricted to a few tens of megabytes. It should be _very_ carefully used.
There are basically no valid new uses of it. There's a few valid legacy users (I think the file descriptor array), and there are some drivers that use it (which is crap, but drivers are drivers), and it's _really_ valid only for modules. Nothing else.
Basically: if you think you need more memory than a kmalloc() can give, you need to re-organize your data structures. To either not need a big area, or to be able to allocate it in chunks.
Linus
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