The HyperNews Linux KHG Discussion Pages

## bigphysarea for Linux 2.0.3{0,1}

  Forum: Supporting Functions
  Re: Allocating large amount of memory (Michael K. Johnson)
  Re: bigphysarea for Linux 2.0? (Greg Hager)
  Keywords: memory allocation Linux 2.0
  Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 13:26:17 GMT
  From: Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>
  Body-URL: http://www.uni-paderborn.de/fachbereich/AG/heiss/linux/bigphysarea.html

Linux Bigphysarea Patch
| # Bigphysarea Patch Operating Systems and Distributed Systems Research Group Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Heiss
# Managing Big Physical Memory Areas in Linux The Linux kernel is optimized for managing many small pieces of memory, usually one page at a time. The largest continuous block that can be allocated is 128Kb (default value). Some drivers need much larger blocks, e.g. drivers for framegrabbers, high speed A/D converters or our SCI driver (see Project Arminius). March 1996 Matt Welsh (mdw@cs.cornell.edu) introduced a first bigphysarea patch for Linux 1.3.71 that allowed reservation of a memory area at boot time available for drivers. Now this patch has been extended. Some features of the new version: Patch against stable kernel (2.0.30, 2.0.31 will follow soon) Comfortable interface (allows alignment of areas) Faster algorithm Parameter checking /proc interface for usage monitoring The patch is available here: bigphysarea-2.0.30.tar.gz. butenuth@uni-paderborn.de