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.TH GET_HUGE_PAGES 3 "October 8, 2008"
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.SH NAME
get_huge_pages, free_huge_pages \- Allocate and free hugepages
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <hugetlbfs.h>
.br
.br
.B void *get_huge_pages(size_t len, ghp_t flags);
.br
.B void free_huge_pages(void *ptr);
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBget_huge_pages()\fP allocates a memory region \fBlen\fP bytes in size
backed by hugepages. Hugepages may be of benefit to applications that use
large amounts of address space and suffer a performance hit due to TLB
misses. Wall-clock time or oprofile can be used to determine if there is
a performance benefit from using hugepages or not.
The \fBlen\fP parameter must be hugepage-aligned. In the current
implementation, only the default hugepage size may be allocated via this
function. Use \fBgethugepagesize\fP to discover what the alignment should
be.
The \fBflags\fP argument changes the behaviour
of the function. Flags may be or'd together.
.TP
.B GHP_DEFAULT
Allocate a region of memory of the requested length backed by hugepages of
the default hugepage size. Return NULL if sufficient pages are not available
.PP
\fBfree_huge_pages()\fP frees a region of memory allocated by
\fBget_huge_pages()\fP. The behaviour of the function if another pointer
is used, valid or otherwise, is undefined.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, a pointer is returned to the allocated memory. On
error, NULL is returned. errno will be set based on what the failure of
mmap() was due to.
.SH SEE ALSO
.I oprofile(1)
,
.I gethugepagesize(3)
,
.I get_hugepage_region(3)
,
.I libhugetlbfs(7)
.SH AUTHORS
libhugetlbfs was written by various people on the libhugetlbfs-devel
mailing list.