Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 13:51:53 +0100
From: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@qumranet.com>
To: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Jack Steiner <steiner@sgi.com>, akpm@linux-foundation.org,
       Robin Holt <holt@sgi.com>, Avi Kivity <avi@qumranet.com>,
       Izik Eidus <izike@qumranet.com>, kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net,
       Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>, general@lists.openfabrics.org,
       Steve Wise <swise@opengridcomputing.com>,
       Roland Dreier <rdreier@cisco.com>, Kanoj Sarcar <kanojsarcar@yahoo.com>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
       daniel.blueman@quadrics.com, Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mmu notifiers #v8
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On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 04:29:34AM +0100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> to something I prefer. Others may not, but I'll post them for debate
> anyway.

Sure, thanks!

> > I didn't drop invalidate_page, because invalidate_range_begin/end
> > would be slower for usages like KVM/GRU (we don't need a begin/end
> > there because where invalidate_page is called, the VM holds a
> > reference on the page). do_wp_page should also use invalidate_page
> > since it can free the page after dropping the PT lock without losing
> > any performance (that's not true for the places where invalidate_range
> > is called).
> 
> I'm still not completely happy with this. I had a very quick look
> at the GRU driver, but I don't see why it can't be implemented
> more like the regular TLB model, and have TLB insertions depend on
> the linux pte, and do invalidates _after_ restricting permissions
> to the pte.
> 
> Ie. I'd still like to get rid of invalidate_range_begin, and get
> rid of invalidate calls from places where permissions are relaxed.

_begin exists because by the time _end is called, the VM already
dropped the reference on the page. This way we can do a single
invalidate no matter how large the range is. I don't see ways to
remove _begin while still invoking _end a single time for the whole
range.

> If we can agree on the API, then I don't see any reason why it can't
> go into 2.6.25, unless someome wants more time to review it (but
> 2.6.25 release should be quite far away still so there should be quite
> a bit of time).

Cool! ;)
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