str02 with 20000 threads requires 0.7s system time. Taking out Ingo's patch (un-patch available per request) by basically deleting all mentions of free_area_cache from the kernel and starting the search for new memory always at the respective bases we observe: leakme terminates successfully with 11 distinctive hardly fragmented areas in /proc/self/maps but thread creating is gringdingly slow: 30+s(!) system time for Ingo's test_str02 with 20000 threads. Now - drumroll ;-) the appended patch works fine with leakme: it ends with only 7 distinct areas in /proc/self/maps and also thread creation seems sufficiently fast with 0.71s for 20000 threads. Signed-off-by: Wolfgang Wander Credit-to: "Richard Purdie" Signed-off-by: Ken Chen Acked-by: Ingo Molnar (partly) Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds J