[ Cc'ing this to tech-kern, because this might be of general intrest. ]

On Sat, 30 Dec 1995 19:56:24 -0800 
 Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com> wrote:

 > Why don't malloc() and free() operate at splhigh()?   It makes no
 > sense to me that disk interrupts should necessarily be blocked while
 > processing ethernet interrupts.   I suppose it might be the right
 > thing from a performance perspective, or it might not, but the two
 > seem sufficiently unrelated that the choice ought to be made based on
 > performance issues, not because disk drivers might call malloc().

Indeed, I suggested to Charles back when this cropped up before on the 
i386 that malloc() should just run at splhigh, but he said that would 
cause the kernel to spend too much time at splhigh, making sound driver, 
etc. lose.

Is there a general opinion on this?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
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