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Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:11:17 +0000
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Ira Snyder <iws@ovro.caltech.edu>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] firmware: speed up request_firmware()
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> Without this patch, loading a 12MB firmware image (FPGA bitfiles) called
> vmalloc() approximately 3000 times. With the patch, vmalloc() is only
> called 13 times, however, some memory is wasted until firmware_release() is
> called. Usually, this happens very quickly, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Particularly on 32bit x86 vmalloc memory space is very precious so while
the current buffer size default may be too small doubling repeatedly is
not a good model IMHO.