> [ malloc() instead of machdep:valloc() ]

On alpha, the scheme would replace memory allocated in the kernel
superpage with mapped memory. It might thrash the translation buffer a
bit more and would reduce the available kernel virtual space. (Valloc
doesn't do either of these.) These may be acceptable tradeoffs, but it
would require more than a back-of-the-envelope analysis to OK.

Part of the problem is a known alpha bug: maxusers can't be much
greater than about 8, because otherwise the process page tables
overflow the kernel map. Until this is fixed (i.e., pmap.old.c is
replaced) this is problem area for port-alpha, although I suspect that
malloc'ing the entire buffer cache would be a small thing compared to
the (sparse) page table space.
----------------------
Ross Harvey	Avalon Computer Systems, Inc.		  ross@teraflop.com
		"My other computer is an alpha."