Phoronix reports a nice win in the memblock pull for Linux 7.4. Memblock is the kernel’s early boot-time memory allocator, used before the full page allocator is up.
What changed
- Google engineer Tarun Sahu noticed
memblock_add_range()andmemblock_isolate_range()were using a linear search to find regions. - Under heavy fragmentation, like Kernel Handover (KHO) with tons of disjoint folios, that scan took forever.
- Switching to a binary search cut KHO memory retrieval “from ~268s to ~50ms.”
My take
Most of us won’t feel this on a laptop. It matters on huge-memory boxes doing live kernel updates. Still, a fix that turns four and a half minutes into a blink is always worth a high five.
Have a blessed day! And Happy Hacking!
