freebsd man page for contigmalloc

CONTIGMALLOC(9) 					   BSD Kernel Developer's Manual					   CONTIGMALLOC(9)

NAME
     contigmalloc, contigfree -- manage contiguous kernel physical memory

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/malloc.h>

     void *
     contigmalloc(unsigned long size, struct malloc_type *type, int flags, vm_paddr_t low, vm_paddr_t high, unsigned long alignment,
	 vm_paddr_t boundary);

     void
     contigfree(void *addr, unsigned long size, struct malloc_type *type);

DESCRIPTION
     The contigmalloc() function allocates size bytes of contiguous physical memory that is aligned to alignment bytes, and which does not cross a
     boundary of boundary bytes.  If successful, the allocation will reside between physical addresses low and high.  The returned pointer points
     to a wired kernel virtual address range of size bytes allocated from the kernel virtual address (KVA) map.

     The flags parameter modifies contigmalloc()'s behaviour as follows:

     M_ZERO  Causes the allocated physical memory to be zero filled.

     M_NOWAIT
	     Causes contigmalloc() to return NULL if the request cannot be immediately fulfilled due to resource shortage.

     Other flags (if present) are ignored.

     The contigfree() function deallocates memory allocated by a previous call to contigmalloc().

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
     The contigmalloc() function does not sleep waiting for memory resources to be freed up, but instead actively reclaims pages before giving up.
     However, unless M_NOWAIT is specified, it may select a page for reclamation that must first be written to backing storage, causing it to
     sleep.

     The contigfree() function does not accept NULL as an address input, unlike free(9).

RETURN VALUES
     The contigmalloc() function returns a kernel virtual address if allocation succeeds, or NULL otherwise.

EXAMPLES
     void *p;
     p = contigmalloc(8192, M_DEVBUF, M_ZERO, 0, (1L << 22),
	 32 * 1024, 1024 * 1024);

     Ask for 8192 bytes of zero-filled memory residing between physical address 0 and 4194303 inclusive, aligned to a 32K boundary and not cross-
     ing a 1M address boundary.

DIAGNOSTICS
     The contigmalloc() function will panic if size is zero, or if alignment or boundary is not a power of two.

SEE ALSO
     malloc(9), memguard(9)

BSD
								 January 29, 2015							       BSD