From 252220dab9d4e4aa61f87b729468e8ac68fcc8bb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ingo Molnar Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:32:33 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] mm: allow only SLUB on PREEMPT_RT Memory allocators may disable interrupts or preemption as part of the allocation and freeing process. For PREEMPT_RT it is important that these sections remain deterministic and short and therefore don't depend on the size of the memory to allocate/ free or the inner state of the algorithm. Until v3.12-RT the SLAB allocator was an option but involved several changes to meet all the requirements. The SLUB design fits better with PREEMPT_RT model and so the SLAB patches were dropped in the 3.12-RT patchset. Comparing the two allocator, SLUB outperformed SLAB in both throughput (time needed to allocate and free memory) and the maximal latency of the system measured with cyclictest during hackbench. SLOB was never evaluated since it was unlikely that it preforms better than SLAB. During a quick test, the kernel crashed with SLOB enabled during boot. Disable SLAB and SLOB on PREEMPT_RT. [bigeasy@linutronix.de: commit description] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20211015210336.gen3tib33ig5q2md@linutronix.de Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka Cc: Christoph Lameter Cc: Pekka Enberg Cc: David Rientjes Cc: Joonsoo Kim Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- init/Kconfig | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig index 21b1f4870c80..45bcaa8e7481 100644 --- a/init/Kconfig +++ b/init/Kconfig @@ -1896,6 +1896,7 @@ choice config SLAB bool "SLAB" + depends on !PREEMPT_RT select HAVE_HARDENED_USERCOPY_ALLOCATOR help The regular slab allocator that is established and known to work @@ -1916,6 +1917,7 @@ config SLUB config SLOB depends on EXPERT bool "SLOB (Simple Allocator)" + depends on !PREEMPT_RT help SLOB replaces the stock allocator with a drastically simpler allocator. SLOB is generally more space efficient but