Dynamic Memory Allocation

Device drivers must be prepared to simultaneously handle all attached devices that they claim to drive. There should be no driver limit on the number of devices that the driver handles, and all per-device information must be dynamically allocated.

void *kmem_alloc(size_t size, int flag);

The standard kernel memory allocation routine is kmem_alloc(9F). It is similar to the C library routine malloc(3C), with the addition of the flag argument. The flag argument can be either KM_SLEEP or KM_NOSLEEP, indicating whether the caller is willing to block if the requested size is not available. If KM_NOSLEEP is set, and memory is not available, kmem_alloc(9F) returns NULL.

kmem_zalloc(9F) is similar to kmem_alloc(9F), but also clears the contents of the allocated memory.

Kernel memory is a limited resource, not pageable, and competes with user applications and the rest of the kernel for physical memory. Drivers that allocate a large amount of kernel memory may cause system performance to degrade.

void kmem_free(void *cp, size_t size);

Memory allocated by kmem_alloc(9F) or by kmem_zalloc(9F) is returned to the system with kmem_free(9F). This is similar to the C library routine free(3C), with the addition of the size argument. Drivers must keep track of the size of each object they allocate in order to call kmem_free(9F) later.