summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000
committerDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000
commit5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744 (patch)
treea94efe259b9009378be6d90eb30d2b019d95c194 /Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst
parentInitial commit. (diff)
downloadlinux-5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744.tar.xz
linux-5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744.zip
Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst41
1 files changed, 41 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst b/Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e5ec9f1a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/core-api/boot-time-mm.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+===========================
+Boot time memory management
+===========================
+
+Early system initialization cannot use "normal" memory management
+simply because it is not set up yet. But there is still need to
+allocate memory for various data structures, for instance for the
+physical page allocator.
+
+A specialized allocator called ``memblock`` performs the
+boot time memory management. The architecture specific initialization
+must set it up in :c:func:`setup_arch` and tear it down in
+:c:func:`mem_init` functions.
+
+Once the early memory management is available it offers a variety of
+functions and macros for memory allocations. The allocation request
+may be directed to the first (and probably the only) node or to a
+particular node in a NUMA system. There are API variants that panic
+when an allocation fails and those that don't.
+
+Memblock also offers a variety of APIs that control its own behaviour.
+
+Memblock Overview
+=================
+
+.. kernel-doc:: mm/memblock.c
+ :doc: memblock overview
+
+
+Functions and structures
+========================
+
+Here is the description of memblock data structures, functions and
+macros. Some of them are actually internal, but since they are
+documented it would be silly to omit them. Besides, reading the
+descriptions for the internal functions can help to understand what
+really happens under the hood.
+
+.. kernel-doc:: include/linux/memblock.h
+.. kernel-doc:: mm/memblock.c
+ :functions: