Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News

Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
Making Device-Based RAM Available To Arbitrary User Processes
Anshuman Khandual wanted to come up with a way for all attached devices to make their on-board RAM available to a running Linux system as just a normal region of RAM that any process could use without having to do anything special.
This is a tough nut to crack, because it's not just a simple matter of mapping the memory and making it available for allocation by user processes. As Anshuman put it, "To achieve seamless integration between system RAM and coherent device memory it must be able to utilize core memory kernel features like anon mapping, file mapping, page cache, driver managed pages, HW poisoning, migrations, reclaim, compaction, etc."
Each of the above requirements had its own set of difficulties, which Anshuman enumerated. For one thing, unlike regular RAM, device RAM couldn't be made available until after a given device had been initialized. That constraint would need to be handled properly. Likewise, each issue had its own constraints and caveats that would need to be papered over so that regular user code would perceive the RAM as simply being available for use.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.