OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/17919/Anatomy_of_the_Linux_Slab_Allocator Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:39:14 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Slub http://osnews.com/thread?240668 http://osnews.com/thread?240668 Note that the SLAB allocator will be replaced with the SLUB allocator once it's proved stable.

It has a much simpler design than SLAB and scales better on SMP's. Wed, 16 May 2007 10:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments Slab allocator http://osnews.com/thread?240699 http://osnews.com/thread?240699 It was designed by Jeff Bonwick, the same guy behind ZFS, for Solaris. Later, the design was copied into Linux.
http://www.osgeek.blogspot.com Wed, 16 May 2007 12:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (osgeek) Comments full lineage included. http://osnews.com/thread?240770 http://osnews.com/thread?240770 "The slab allocator used in Linux is based on an algorithm first introduced by Jeff Bonwick for the SunOS operating system." sounds like a good defence; just in case Microsoft decide to patent "algorithms for allocating memory in slabs"
Everyone better start to track the lineage of their software. Wed, 16 May 2007 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alban) Comments RE: Slab allocator http://osnews.com/thread?240802 http://osnews.com/thread?240802
Later, the design was copied into Linux.


And later still, copied into AmigaOS 4. ;-)

http://www.amigaos4.com/index.php%3Foption=content&task=vie... Edited 2007-05-16 18:40 Wed, 16 May 2007 18:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nicholas) Comments RE: full lineage included. http://osnews.com/thread?240819 http://osnews.com/thread?240819 No, no. They can't patent algorithms. They would patent a "method and system for allocating memory for objects." Grouping similar objects into slabs would be a sub-claim. Wed, 16 May 2007 19:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments Actually http://osnews.com/thread?240995 http://osnews.com/thread?240995 Lots of operating systems have a slab allocator, since it's really a great thing.
DragonFly has one, Syllable has one, Haiku has got one too recently (courthesy of Hugo Santos). Thu, 17 May 2007 06:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jack Burton) Comments