[petsc-dev] Adding support memkind allocators in PETSc

[Richard Mills]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:

>
>   Forget about the issue of "changing" PetscMallocN() or adding a new
> interface instead, that is a minor syntax and annoyance issue:
>
>   The question is "is it worth exploring adding a context for certain
> memory allocations that would allow us to "do" various things to the memory
> and "indicate" properties of the memory"? I think, though I agree with Jed
> that it could be fraught with difficulties, that is is worthwhile playing
> around with this.
>
>   Barry
>
>
I vote "yes".  One might want to, say

* Give hints via something like madvise() on how/when the memory might be
accessed.
* Specify a preferred "kind" of memory (and behavior if the preferred kind
is not available, or perhaps even specify a priority on how hard to try to
get the preferred memory kind)
* Specify something like a preference to interleave allocation blocks
between different kinds of memory

I'm sure we can come up with plenty of other possibilities, some of which
might actually be useful, many of which will be useful only for very
contrived cases, and some that are not useful today but may become useful
as memory systems evolve.

--Richard
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