genalloc: make it possible to use a custom allocation algorithm
authorBenjamin Gaignard <benjamin.gaignard@linaro.org>
Fri, 5 Oct 2012 00:13:20 +0000 (17:13 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Fri, 5 Oct 2012 18:04:57 +0000 (03:04 +0900)
commitca279cf1065fb689abea1dc7d8c11787729bb185
treefdde907d1c3198f81c9085f858ac64c7a3cc50d8
parente96875677fb2b7cb739c5d7769824dff7260d31d
genalloc: make it possible to use a custom allocation algorithm

Premit use of another algorithm than the default first-fit one.  For
example a custom algorithm could be used to manage alignment requirements.

As I can't predict all the possible requirements/needs for all allocation
uses cases, I add a "free" field 'void *data' to pass any needed
information to the allocation function.  For example 'data' could be used
to handle a structure where you store the alignment, the expected memory
bank, the requester device, or any information that could influence the
allocation algorithm.

An usage example may look like this:
struct my_pool_constraints {
int align;
int bank;
...
};

unsigned long my_custom_algo(unsigned long *map, unsigned long size,
unsigned long start, unsigned int nr, void *data)
{
struct my_pool_constraints *constraints = data;
...
deal with allocation contraints
...
return the index in bitmap where perform the allocation
}

void create_my_pool()
{
struct my_pool_constraints c;
struct gen_pool *pool = gen_pool_create(...);
gen_pool_add(pool, ...);
gen_pool_set_algo(pool, my_custom_algo, &c);
}

Add of best-fit algorithm function:
most of the time best-fit is slower then first-fit but memory fragmentation
is lower. The random buffer allocation/free tests don't show any arithmetic
relation between the allocation time and fragmentation but the
best-fit algorithm
is sometime able to perform the allocation when the first-fit can't.

This new algorithm help to remove static allocations on ESRAM, a small but
fast on-chip RAM of few KB, used for high-performance uses cases like DMA
linked lists, graphic accelerators, encoders/decoders. On the Ux500
(in the ARM tree) we have define 5 ESRAM banks of 128 KB each and use of
static allocations becomes unmaintainable:
cd arch/arm/mach-ux500 && grep -r ESRAM .
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:/* Base address and bank offsets for ESRAM */
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BASE   0x40000000
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BANK_SIZE      0x00020000
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BANK0  U8500_ESRAM_BASE
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BANK1       (U8500_ESRAM_BASE + U8500_ESRAM_BANK_SIZE)
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BANK2       (U8500_ESRAM_BANK1 + U8500_ESRAM_BANK_SIZE)
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BANK3       (U8500_ESRAM_BANK2 + U8500_ESRAM_BANK_SIZE)
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_BANK4       (U8500_ESRAM_BANK3 + U8500_ESRAM_BANK_SIZE)
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_ESRAM_DMA_LCPA_OFFSET     0x10000
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_DMA_LCPA_BASE
(U8500_ESRAM_BANK0 + U8500_ESRAM_DMA_LCPA_OFFSET)
./include/mach/db8500-regs.h:#define U8500_DMA_LCLA_BASE U8500_ESRAM_BANK4

I want to use genalloc to do dynamic allocations but I need to be able to
fine tune the allocation algorithm. I my case best-fit algorithm give
better results than first-fit, but it will not be true for every use case.

Signed-off-by: Benjamin Gaignard <benjamin.gaignard@stericsson.com>
Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
include/linux/genalloc.h
lib/genalloc.c