Date:   Thu, 9 Mar 2023 06:31:25 +0000
From:   Hyeonggon Yoo <42.hyeyoo@gmail.com>
To:     Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc:     linux-mm@kvack.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>,
        Song Liu <song@kernel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        x86@kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 1/5] mm: intorduce __GFP_UNMAPPED and unmapped_alloc()
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 <20230308094106.227365-2-rppt@kernel.org>
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On Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 11:41:02AM +0200, Mike Rapoport wrote:
> From: "Mike Rapoport (IBM)" <rppt@kernel.org>
> 
> When set_memory or set_direct_map APIs used to change attribute or
> permissions for chunks of several pages, the large PMD that maps these
> pages in the direct map must be split. Fragmenting the direct map in such
> manner causes TLB pressure and, eventually, performance degradation.
> 
> To avoid excessive direct map fragmentation, add ability to allocate
> "unmapped" pages with __GFP_UNMAPPED flag that will cause removal of the
> allocated pages from the direct map and use a cache of the unmapped pages.
> 
> This cache is replenished with higher order pages with preference for
> PMD_SIZE pages when possible so that there will be fewer splits of large
> pages in the direct map.
> 
> The cache is implemented as a buddy allocator, so it can serve high order
> allocations of unmapped pages.

Hello,

To me it seems unnecessary to increase pageblock bitmap size just to
distinguish if it is allocated with __GFP_UNMAPPED.

I think this can be implemented as an independent cache on top of
buddy allocator, and introducing new API for unmapped page
allocation and freeing?

Thanks,
Hyeonggon