*nix Documentation Project
·  Home
 +   man pages
·  Linux HOWTOs
·  FreeBSD Tips
·  *niX Forums

  man pages->FreeBSD man pages -> uma_zalloc (9)              
Title
Content
Arch
Section
 

ZONE(9)

Contents


NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     uma_zcreate, uma_zalloc, uma_zfree, uma_zdestroy, uma_zone_set_max --
     zone allocator

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     #include <sys/param.h>
     #include <sys/queue.h>
     #include <vm/uma.h>

     uma_zone_t
     uma_zcreate(char *name, int size, uma_ctor ctor, uma_dtor dtor,
	 uma_init uminit, uma_fini fini, int align, u_int16_t flags);

     void *
     uma_zalloc(uma_zone_t zone, int flags);

     void
     uma_zfree(uma_zone_t zone, void *item);

     void
     uma_zdestroy(uma_zone_t zone);

     void
     uma_zone_set_max(uma_zone_t zone, int nitems);

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The zone allocator provides an efficient interface for managing dynamically-sized
 collections of items of similar size.	The zone allocator can
     work with preallocated zones as well as with runtime-allocated ones, and
     is therefore available much earlier in the boot process than other memory
     management routines.

     A zone is an extensible collection of items of identical size.  The zone
     allocator keeps track of which items are in use and which are not, and
     provides functions for allocating items from the zone and for releasing
     them back (which makes them available for later use).

     The zone allocator stores state information inside the items proper while
     they are not allocated, so structures that will be managed by the zone
     allocator and wish to use the type stable property of zones by leaving
     some fields pre-filled between allocations, must reserve two pointers at
     the very beginning for internal use by the zone allocator, as follows:

	   struct my_item {
		   struct my_item  *z_rsvd1;
		   struct my_item  *z_rsvd2;
		   /* rest of structure */
	   };

     Alternatively they should assume those entries corrupted after each allocation.
  After the first allocation of an item, it will have been cleared
     to zeroes, however subsequent allocations will retain the contents as of
     the last free, with the exception of the fields mentioned above.

     The uma_zcreate() function creates a new zone from which items may then
     be allocated from.  The name argument is a text name of the zone for
     debugging and stats; this memory should not be freed until the zone has
     been deallocated.

     The ctor and dtor arguments are callback functions that are called by the
     uma subsystem at the time of the call to uma_zalloc() and uma_zfree()
     respectively.  Their purpose is to provide hooks for initializing or
     destroying things that need to be done at the time of the allocation or
     release of a resource.  A good usage for the ctor and dtor callbacks
     might be to adjust a global count of the number of objects allocated.

     The uminit and fini arguments are used to optimize the allocation of
     objects from the zone.  They are called by the uma subsystem whenever it
     needs to allocate or free several items to satisfy requests or memory
     pressure.	A good use for the uminit and fini callbacks might be to initialize
 and destroy mutexes contained within the object.  This would
     allow one to re-use already initialized mutexes when an object is
     returned from the uma subsystem's object cache.  They are not called on
     each call to uma_zalloc() and uma_zfree() but rather in a batch mode on
     several objects.

     To allocate an item from a zone, simply call uma_zalloc() with a pointer
     to that zone and set the flags argument to selected flags as documented
     in malloc(9).  It will return a pointer to an item if successful, or NULL
     in the rare case where all items in the zone are in use and the allocator
     is unable to grow the zone or when M_NOWAIT is specified.

     Items are released back to the zone from which they were allocated by
     calling uma_zfree() with a pointer to the zone and a pointer to the item.

     Created zones, which are empty, can be destroyed using uma_zdestroy(),
     freeing all memory that was allocated for the zone.  All items allocated
     from the zone with uma_zalloc() must have been freed with uma_zfree()
     before.

     The purpose of uma_zone_set_max() is to limit the maximum amount of memory
 that the system can dedicated toward the zone specified by the zone
     argument.	The nitems argument gives the upper limit of items in the
     zone.  This limits the total number of items in the zone which includes:
     allocated items, free items and free items in the per-cpu caches.	On
     systems with more than one CPU it may not be possible to allocate the
     specified number of items even when there is no shortage of memory,
     because all of the remaining free items may be in the caches of the other
     CPUs when the limit is hit.

RETURN VALUES    [Toc]    [Back]

     The uma_zalloc() function returns a pointer to an item, or NULL if the
     zone ran out of unused items and the allocator was unable to enlarge it.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

      
      
     malloc(9)

HISTORY    [Toc]    [Back]

     The zone allocator first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.	It was radically
     changed in FreeBSD 5.0 to function as a slab allocator.

AUTHORS    [Toc]    [Back]

     The zone allocator was written by John S. Dyson.  The zone allocator was
     rewritten in large parts by Jeff Roberson <[email protected]> to function
     as a slab allocator.

     This manual page was written by Dag-Erling Coidan Smorgrav
     <[email protected]>.  Changes for UMA by Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven
     <[email protected]>.


FreeBSD 5.2.1			 July 21, 2003			 FreeBSD 5.2.1
[ Back ]
 Similar pages
Name OS Title
zic Tru64 Time zone compiler
zdump Tru64 Time zone dumper
zdump Linux time zone dumper
tzfile OpenBSD time zone information
tzfile Tru64 Time zone information
zic OpenBSD time zone compiler
zdump OpenBSD time zone dumper
addzone IRIX add a zone to a specific interface
tzfile Linux time zone information
zic Linux time zone compiler
Copyright © 2004-2005 DeniX Solutions SRL
newsletter delivery service