This is the result of running the Coccinelle script from
scripts/coccinelle/api/kmalloc_objs.cocci. The script is designed to
avoid scalar types (which need careful case-by-case checking), and
instead replace kmalloc-family calls that allocate struct or union
object instances:
Single allocations: kmalloc(sizeof(TYPE), ...)
are replaced with: kmalloc_obj(TYPE, ...)
Array allocations: kmalloc_array(COUNT, sizeof(TYPE), ...)
are replaced with: kmalloc_objs(TYPE, COUNT, ...)
Flex array allocations: kmalloc(struct_size(PTR, FAM, COUNT), ...)
are replaced with: kmalloc_flex(*PTR, FAM, COUNT, ...)
(where TYPE may also be *VAR)
The resulting allocations no longer return "void *", instead returning
"TYPE *".
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org>
This patch introduces dm-pcache, a new DM target that places a DAX-
capable persistent-memory device in front of any slower block device and
uses it as a high-throughput, low-latency cache.
Design highlights
-----------------
- DAX data path – data is copied directly between DRAM and the pmem
mapping, bypassing the block layer’s overhead.
- Segmented, crash-consistent layout
- all layout metadata are dual-replicated CRC-protected.
- atomic kset flushes; key replay on mount guarantees cache integrity
even after power loss.
- Striped multi-tree index
- Multi‑tree indexing for high parallelism.
- overlap-resolution logic ensures non-intersecting cached extents.
- Background services
- write-back worker flushes dirty keys in order, preserving backing-device
crash consistency. This is important for checkpoint in cloud storage.
- garbage collector reclaims clean segments when utilisation exceeds a
tunable threshold.
- Data integrity – optional CRC32 on cached payload; metadata always protected.
Comparison with existing block-level caches
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Feature | pcache (this patch) | bcache | dm-writecache |
|----------------------------------|---------------------------------|------------------------------|---------------------------|
| pmem access method | DAX | bio (block I/O) | DAX |
| Write latency (4 K rand-write) | ~5 µs | ~20 µs | ~5 µs |
| Concurrency | multi subtree index | global index tree | single tree + wc_lock |
| IOPS (4K randwrite, 32 numjobs) | 2.1 M | 352 K | 283 K |
| Read-cache support | YES | YES | NO |
| Deployment | no re-format of backend | backend devices must be | no re-format of backend |
| | | reformatted | |
| Write-back ordering | log-structured; | no ordering guarantee | no ordering guarantee |
| | preserves app-IO-order | | |
| Data integrity checks | metadata + data CRC(optional) | metadata CRC only | none |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Signed-off-by: Dongsheng Yang <dongsheng.yang@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
