Re: new allocation algorithm

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>]

On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Rik van Riel wrote:
> 
> I just came up with the idea of using an ext2 like algorithm
> for memory allocation, in which we:
> - group memory in 128 PAGE groups
> - have one unsigned char counter per group, counting the number
>   of used pages

Let's wait with how well the current setup works. It seems to perform
reasonably well even on smaller machines (modulo your patch), and I think
we'd better more-or-less freeze it waiting for further info on what people
actually think. 

The current scheme is fairly efficient and extremely stable, and gives
good behaviour for the cases we _really_ care about (pageorders 0, 1 and
to some degree 2). It comes reasonably close to working for the higher
orders too, but they really aren't as critical..

		Linus