Re: [RFC PATCH 3/3] mm/map_contig: Add mmap(MAP_CONTIG) support

From: Mike Kravetz
Date: Mon Oct 16 2017 - 17:19:25 EST


On 10/16/2017 02:03 PM, Laura Abbott wrote:
> On 10/16/2017 01:32 PM, Mike Kravetz wrote:
>> On 10/16/2017 11:07 AM, Michal Hocko wrote:
>>> On Mon 16-10-17 10:43:38, Mike Kravetz wrote:
>>>> Just to be clear, the posix standard talks about a typed memory object.
>>>> The suggested implementation has one create a connection to the memory
>>>> object to receive a fd, then use mmap as usual to get a mapping backed
>>>> by contiguous pages/memory. Of course, this type of implementation is
>>>> not a requirement.
>>>
>>> I am not sure that POSIC standard for typed memory is easily
>>> implementable in Linux. Does any OS actually implement this API?
>>
>> A quick search only reveals Blackberry QNX and PlayBook OS.
>>
>> Also somewhat related. In a earlier thread someone pointed out this
>> out of tree module used for contiguous allocations in SOC (and other?)
>> environments. It even has the option of making use of CMA.
>> http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/CMEM_Overview
>>
>
> If we're at the point where we're discussing CMEM, I'd like to
> point out that ion (drivers/staging/android/ion) already provides an
> ioctl interface to allocate CMA and other types of memory. It's
> mostly used for Android as the name implies. I don't pretend the
> interface is perfect but it could be useful as a discussion point
> for allocation interfaces.

Thanks Laura,

I was just pointing out other use cases where people thought contiguous
allocations were useful. And, it was useful enough that someone actually
wrote code to make it happen.

--
Mike Kravetz