mm: add alloc_pages_exact() and free_pages_exact()

alloc_pages_exact() is similar to alloc_pages(), except that it allocates
the minimum number of pages to fulfill the request.  This is useful if you
want to allocate a very large buffer that is slightly larger than an even
power-of-two number of pages.  In that case, alloc_pages() will waste a
lot of memory.

I have a video driver that wants to allocate a 5MB buffer.  alloc_pages()
wiill waste 3MB of physically-contiguous memory.

Signed-off-by: Timur Tabi <timur@freescale.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 53 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index eaa86671ebbd..8d528d57b403 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -1697,6 +1697,59 @@ void free_pages(unsigned long addr, unsigned int order)
 
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(free_pages);
 
+/**
+ * alloc_pages_exact - allocate an exact number physically-contiguous pages.
+ * @size: the number of bytes to allocate
+ * @gfp_mask: GFP flags for the allocation
+ *
+ * This function is similar to alloc_pages(), except that it allocates the
+ * minimum number of pages to satisfy the request.  alloc_pages() can only
+ * allocate memory in power-of-two pages.
+ *
+ * This function is also limited by MAX_ORDER.
+ *
+ * Memory allocated by this function must be released by free_pages_exact().
+ */
+void *alloc_pages_exact(size_t size, gfp_t gfp_mask)
+{
+	unsigned int order = get_order(size);
+	unsigned long addr;
+
+	addr = __get_free_pages(gfp_mask, order);
+	if (addr) {
+		unsigned long alloc_end = addr + (PAGE_SIZE << order);
+		unsigned long used = addr + PAGE_ALIGN(size);
+
+		split_page(virt_to_page(addr), order);
+		while (used < alloc_end) {
+			free_page(used);
+			used += PAGE_SIZE;
+		}
+	}
+
+	return (void *)addr;
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL(alloc_pages_exact);
+
+/**
+ * free_pages_exact - release memory allocated via alloc_pages_exact()
+ * @virt: the value returned by alloc_pages_exact.
+ * @size: size of allocation, same value as passed to alloc_pages_exact().
+ *
+ * Release the memory allocated by a previous call to alloc_pages_exact.
+ */
+void free_pages_exact(void *virt, size_t size)
+{
+	unsigned long addr = (unsigned long)virt;
+	unsigned long end = addr + PAGE_ALIGN(size);
+
+	while (addr < end) {
+		free_page(addr);
+		addr += PAGE_SIZE;
+	}
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL(free_pages_exact);
+
 static unsigned int nr_free_zone_pages(int offset)
 {
 	struct zoneref *z;