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Date:   Wed, 31 Oct 2018 10:29:42 +0100
From:   Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
To:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>, nadav.amit@gmail.com,
        Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
        Igor Stoppa <igor.stoppa@gmail.com>,
        Mimi Zohar <zohar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>,
        James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>,
        Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com>,
        linux-integrity <linux-integrity@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-security-module <linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org>,
        Igor Stoppa <igor.stoppa@huawei.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
        Laura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com>,
        Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        "open list:DOCUMENTATION" <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 10/17] prmem: documentation
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On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 02:25:51PM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 11:51:17AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > Finally, one issue: rare_alloc() is going to utterly suck
> > performance-wise due to the global IPI when the region gets zapped out
> > of the direct map or otherwise made RO.  This is the same issue that
> > makes all existing XPO efforts so painful. We need to either optimize
> > the crap out of it somehow or we need to make sure it’s not called
> > except during rare events like device enumeration.
> 
> Batching operations is kind of the whole point of the VM ;-)  Either
> this rare memory gets used a lot, in which case we'll want to create slab
> caches for it, make it a MM zone and the whole nine yeards, or it's not
> used very much in which case it doesn't matter that performance sucks.

Yes, for the dynamic case something along those lines would be needed.
If we have a single rare zone, we could even have __GFP_RARE or whatever
that manages this.

The page allocator would have to grow a rare memblock type, and every
rare alloc would allocate from a rare memblock, when none is available,
creation of a rare block would set up the mappings etc..

> For now, I'd suggest allocating 2MB chunks as needed, and having a
> shrinker to hand back any unused pieces.

Something like the percpu allocator?