Subject: Re: [PATCH netdev-2.6 7/10] ixgb: Replace kmalloc with vmalloc to allocate driver local data structures

From: Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:02:47 -0400

Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 05:50:45AM -0700, Venkatesan, Ganesh wrote:
> 
>>This is a trade-off between space allocated via kmalloc and vmalloc. My
>>understanding is that kmalloc space is more limited than vmalloc. Is
>>this incorrect?
> 
> 
> Yes. kmalloc space is only limited by the amount of free memory you have
> in your system, vmalloc has very low absolute limits (down to 64MB in
> some configurations)..

However, kmalloc() has much lower per-call limits than vmalloc().

I'm interested to see a VM person weigh in on this...

Drivers are certainly allowed to use vmalloc.

	Jeff