Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964800AbYBCDdk (ORCPT ); Sat, 2 Feb 2008 22:33:40 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S933240AbYBCDdc (ORCPT ); Sat, 2 Feb 2008 22:33:32 -0500 Received: from host36-195-149-62.serverdedicati.aruba.it ([62.149.195.36]:44820 "EHLO mx.cpushare.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933231AbYBCDdb (ORCPT ); Sat, 2 Feb 2008 22:33:31 -0500 Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 04:33:18 +0100 From: Andrea Arcangeli To: Jack Steiner Cc: Christoph Lameter , Robin Holt , Avi Kivity , Izik Eidus , kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Peter Zijlstra , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, daniel.blueman@quadrics.com Subject: Re: [PATCH] mmu notifiers #v5 Message-ID: <20080203033318.GE7185@v2.random> References: <20080131045750.855008281@sgi.com> <20080131171806.GN7185@v2.random> <20080131234101.GS7185@v2.random> <20080201120955.GX7185@v2.random> <20080203021704.GC7185@v2.random> <20080203031457.GA16127@sgi.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080203031457.GA16127@sgi.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1715 Lines: 32 On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 09:14:57PM -0600, Jack Steiner wrote: > Also, most (but not all) applications that use the GRU do not usually do > anything that requires frequent flushing (fortunately). The GRU is intended > for HPC-like applications. These don't usually do frequent map/unmap > operations or anything else that requires a lot of flushes. > > I expect that KVM is a lot different. I don't think so. invalidate_page/pages/range_start,end is a slow and unfrequent path for KVM (or alternatively the ranges are very small in which case _range_start/end won't payoff compared to _pages). Whenever invalidate_page[s] become a fast path, we're generally I/O bound. get_user_pages is always the fast path instead. I thought it was much more important that get_user_pages scale as well as it does now and that the KVM page fault isn't serialized with a mutex, than whatever invalidate side optimization. get_user_pages may run frequently from all vcpus even if there are no invalidates and no memory pressure and I don't mean only during startup. > I have most of the GRU code working with the latest mmuops patch. I still > have a list of loose ends that I'll get to next week. The most important is > the exact handling of the range invalidates. The code that I currently have > works (mostly) but has a few endcases that will cause problems. Once I > finish, I'll be glad to send you snippets of the code (or all of it) if you > would like to take a look. Sure. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/