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authorJie Zhang <jie.zhang@analog.com>2009-12-14 21:00:02 -0500
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2009-12-15 11:53:24 -0500
commitea637639591def87a54cea811cbac796980cb30d (patch)
tree7ea3e4baf2ffade539ae30192521d331f8e863fa /Documentation
parent5dc37642cbce34619e4588a9f0bdad1d2f870956 (diff)
nommu: fix malloc performance by adding uninitialized flag
The NOMMU code currently clears all anonymous mmapped memory. While this is what we want in the default case, all memory allocation from userspace under NOMMU has to go through this interface, including malloc() which is allowed to return uninitialized memory. This can easily be a significant performance penalty. So for constrained embedded systems were security is irrelevant, allow people to avoid clearing memory unnecessarily. This also alters the ELF-FDPIC binfmt such that it obtains uninitialised memory for the brk and stack region. Signed-off-by: Jie Zhang <jie.zhang@analog.com> Signed-off-by: Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org> Signed-off-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> Acked-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org> Acked-by: Greg Ungerer <gerg@snapgear.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt26
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt b/Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt
index b565e8279d13..8e1ddec2c78a 100644
--- a/Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt
+++ b/Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt
@@ -119,6 +119,32 @@ FURTHER NOTES ON NO-MMU MMAP
119 granule but will only discard the excess if appropriately configured as 119 granule but will only discard the excess if appropriately configured as
120 this has an effect on fragmentation. 120 this has an effect on fragmentation.
121 121
122 (*) The memory allocated by a request for an anonymous mapping will normally
123 be cleared by the kernel before being returned in accordance with the
124 Linux man pages (ver 2.22 or later).
125
126 In the MMU case this can be achieved with reasonable performance as
127 regions are backed by virtual pages, with the contents only being mapped
128 to cleared physical pages when a write happens on that specific page
129 (prior to which, the pages are effectively mapped to the global zero page
130 from which reads can take place). This spreads out the time it takes to
131 initialize the contents of a page - depending on the write-usage of the
132 mapping.
133
134 In the no-MMU case, however, anonymous mappings are backed by physical
135 pages, and the entire map is cleared at allocation time. This can cause
136 significant delays during a userspace malloc() as the C library does an
137 anonymous mapping and the kernel then does a memset for the entire map.
138
139 However, for memory that isn't required to be precleared - such as that
140 returned by malloc() - mmap() can take a MAP_UNINITIALIZED flag to
141 indicate to the kernel that it shouldn't bother clearing the memory before
142 returning it. Note that CONFIG_MMAP_ALLOW_UNINITIALIZED must be enabled
143 to permit this, otherwise the flag will be ignored.
144
145 uClibc uses this to speed up malloc(), and the ELF-FDPIC binfmt uses this
146 to allocate the brk and stack region.
147
122 (*) A list of all the private copy and anonymous mappings on the system is 148 (*) A list of all the private copy and anonymous mappings on the system is
123 visible through /proc/maps in no-MMU mode. 149 visible through /proc/maps in no-MMU mode.
124 150