Disabling interrupts can be avoided now. However, list operation still require disabling interrupts since allocations can occur from interrupt contexts and there is no way to perform atomic list operations. The acquition of the list_lock therefore has to disable interrupts as well. Dropping interrupt handling significantly simplifies the slowpath. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter --- mm/slub.c | 16 +++++----------- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) Index: linux-2.6/mm/slub.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/mm/slub.c 2011-05-31 10:20:09.792975006 -0500 +++ linux-2.6/mm/slub.c 2011-05-31 10:20:15.502974969 -0500 @@ -2197,11 +2197,10 @@ static void __slab_free(struct kmem_cach struct kmem_cache_node *n = NULL; unsigned long uninitialized_var(flags); - local_irq_save(flags); stat(s, FREE_SLOWPATH); if (kmem_cache_debug(s) && !free_debug_processing(s, page, x, addr)) - goto out_unlock; + return; do { prior = page->freelist; @@ -2220,7 +2219,7 @@ static void __slab_free(struct kmem_cach * Otherwise the list_lock will synchronize with * other processors updating the list of slabs. */ - spin_lock(&n->list_lock); + spin_lock_irqsave(&n->list_lock, flags); } inuse = new.inuse; @@ -2236,7 +2235,7 @@ static void __slab_free(struct kmem_cach */ if (was_frozen) stat(s, FREE_FROZEN); - goto out_unlock; + return; } /* @@ -2259,11 +2258,7 @@ static void __slab_free(struct kmem_cach stat(s, FREE_ADD_PARTIAL); } } - - spin_unlock(&n->list_lock); - -out_unlock: - local_irq_restore(flags); + spin_unlock_irqrestore(&n->list_lock, flags); return; slab_empty: @@ -2275,8 +2270,7 @@ slab_empty: stat(s, FREE_REMOVE_PARTIAL); } - spin_unlock(&n->list_lock); - local_irq_restore(flags); + spin_unlock_irqrestore(&n->list_lock, flags); stat(s, FREE_SLAB); discard_slab(s, page); }