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[Xen-devel] Xmalloc worst case performance and bad corner cases

To: "Xen-Devel (E-mail)" <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Xen-devel] Xmalloc worst case performance and bad corner cases
From: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:34:53 +0000 (GMT)
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It appears that if xmalloc (Xen heap allocator) is
used for a long sequence of n memory requests with
the size of each request greater than a half-page,
but less than a page, performance will be O(n**2).

True?

And because of space for a header and alignment,
the interval is actually from slightly less than
a half-page to slightly less than a full-page...
and xmalloc of a few bytes less than a full-page will
actually end up allocating two full pages!

True?

(Yes, I realize that xmalloc'ing a "long sequence"
from Xen heap is not a good idea because the Xen
heap is rather small, but I currently have a veneer
using the xmalloc/xfree routines on top of the
domain heap, and "future versions" of 64-bit combined
heap allocation may reuse the existing allocation
algorithm.)

Dan

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