Software State Management

To assist device driver writers in allocating state structures, the Solaris 8 DDI/DKI provides a set of memory management routines called the software state management routines (also known as the soft state routines). These routines dynamically allocate, retrieve, and destroy memory items of a specified size, and hide the details of list management. An instance number is used to identify the desired memory item; this number can be (and usually is) the instance number assigned by the system.

Routines are provided to:

• Initialize a driver's soft state list

• Allocate space for an instance of a driver's soft state

• Retrieve a pointer to an instance of a driver's soft state

• Free the memory for an instance of a driver's soft state

• Finish using a driver's soft state list

See "Loadable Driver Interfaces" for an example of how to use these routines.