From: Eric Dumazet The existing comment in mm/slab.c is *perfect*, so I reproduce it : /* * CPU bound tasks (e.g. network routing) can exhibit cpu bound * allocation behaviour: Most allocs on one cpu, most free operations * on another cpu. For these cases, an efficient object passing between * cpus is necessary. This is provided by a shared array. The array * replaces Bonwick's magazine layer. * On uniprocessor, it's functionally equivalent (but less efficient) * to a larger limit. Thus disabled by default. */ As most shiped linux kernels are now compiled with CONFIG_SMP, there is no way a preprocessor #if can detect if the machine is UP or SMP. Better to use num_possible_cpus(). This means on UP we allocate a 'size=0 shared array', to be more efficient. Another patch can later avoid the allocations of 'empty shared arrays', to save some memory. Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet Acked-by: Pekka Enberg Acked-by: Christoph Lameter Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- mm/slab.c | 4 +--- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 3 deletions(-) diff -puN mm/slab.c~slab-use-num_possible_cpus-in-enable_cpucache mm/slab.c --- a/mm/slab.c~slab-use-num_possible_cpus-in-enable_cpucache +++ a/mm/slab.c @@ -4030,10 +4030,8 @@ static int enable_cpucache(struct kmem_c * to a larger limit. Thus disabled by default. */ shared = 0; -#ifdef CONFIG_SMP - if (cachep->buffer_size <= PAGE_SIZE) + if (cachep->buffer_size <= PAGE_SIZE && num_possible_cpus() > 1) shared = 8; -#endif #if DEBUG /* _