On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Andi Kleen wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 02:54:52PM -0800, David S. Miller wrote:
> >    Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 23:58:36 +0100
> >    From: Andi Kleen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > 
> >    Why exactly a power of two ? To get rid of ->index ? 
> > 
> > To make things like "page - mem_map" et al. use shifts instead of
> > expensive multiplies...
> 
> I thought that is what ->index is for ? 

No. "index" only gives the virtual index.

"page - mem_map" is how you get the _physical_ index in the zone in
question, which is common for physical tranlations (ie "pte_page()",
"page_to_virt()" or "page_to_phys()")

> Also gcc seems to be already quite clever at dividing through small
> integers, e.g. using mul and shift and sub, so it may not be even worth to reach
> for a real power-of-two. 

Look at the code - it's a big multiply to do a divide by 68 or similar.
Quite expensive.

Doing "page->address - TASK_SIZE" on x86 for the non-highmem case would
probably be faster.

                Linus

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