kmalloc allocator

• The kmalloc allocator is the general purpose memory allocator in the Linux kernel, for objects from 8 bytes to 128 KB

• For small sizes, it relies on generic SLAB caches, named kmalloc-XXX in /proc/slabinfo

• For larger sizes, it relies on the page allocator

• The allocated area is guaranteed to be physically contiguous

• The allocated area size is rounded up to the next power of two size (while using the SLAB allocator directly allows to have more flexibility)

• It uses the same flags as the page allocator (GFP_KERNEL, GFP_ATOMIC, GFP_DMA, etc.) with the same semantics.

• Should be used as the primary allocator unless there is a strong reason to use another one.