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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst | 81 |
1 files changed, 38 insertions, 43 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst b/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst index a8cf6809e36e..37c57ca32629 100644 --- a/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst +++ b/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst @@ -4,8 +4,9 @@ Transparent Hugepage Support ============================ -This document describes design principles Transparent Hugepage (THP) -Support and its interaction with other parts of the memory management. +This document describes design principles for Transparent Hugepage (THP) +support and its interaction with other parts of the memory management +system. Design principles ================= @@ -37,31 +38,25 @@ get_user_pages and follow_page get_user_pages and follow_page if run on a hugepage, will return the head or tail pages as usual (exactly as they would do on -hugetlbfs). Most gup users will only care about the actual physical +hugetlbfs). Most GUP users will only care about the actual physical address of the page and its temporary pinning to release after the I/O is complete, so they won't ever notice the fact the page is huge. But if any driver is going to mangle over the page structure of the tail page (like for checking page->mapping or other bits that are relevant for the head page and not the tail page), it should be updated to jump -to check head page instead. Taking reference on any head/tail page would -prevent page from being split by anyone. +to check head page instead. Taking a reference on any head/tail page would +prevent the page from being split by anyone. .. note:: these aren't new constraints to the GUP API, and they match the - same constrains that applies to hugetlbfs too, so any driver capable + same constraints that apply to hugetlbfs too, so any driver capable of handling GUP on hugetlbfs will also work fine on transparent hugepage backed mappings. In case you can't handle compound pages if they're returned by -follow_page, the FOLL_SPLIT bit can be specified as parameter to +follow_page, the FOLL_SPLIT bit can be specified as a parameter to follow_page, so that it will split the hugepages before returning -them. Migration for example passes FOLL_SPLIT as parameter to -follow_page because it's not hugepage aware and in fact it can't work -at all on hugetlbfs (but it instead works fine on transparent -hugepages thanks to FOLL_SPLIT). migration simply can't deal with -hugepages being returned (as it's not only checking the pfn of the -page and pinning it during the copy but it pretends to migrate the -memory in regular page sizes and with regular pte/pmd mappings). +them. Graceful fallback ================= @@ -72,11 +67,11 @@ pmd_offset. It's trivial to make the code transparent hugepage aware by just grepping for "pmd_offset" and adding split_huge_pmd where missing after pmd_offset returns the pmd. Thanks to the graceful fallback design, with a one liner change, you can avoid to write -hundred if not thousand of lines of complex code to make your code +hundreds if not thousands of lines of complex code to make your code hugepage aware. If you're not walking pagetables but you run into a physical hugepage -but you can't handle it natively in your code, you can split it by +that you can't handle natively in your code, you can split it by calling split_huge_page(page). This is what the Linux VM does before it tries to swapout the hugepage for example. split_huge_page() can fail if the page is pinned and you must handle this correctly. @@ -103,18 +98,18 @@ split_huge_page() or split_huge_pmd() has a cost. To make pagetable walks huge pmd aware, all you need to do is to call pmd_trans_huge() on the pmd returned by pmd_offset. You must hold the -mmap_sem in read (or write) mode to be sure an huge pmd cannot be +mmap_sem in read (or write) mode to be sure a huge pmd cannot be created from under you by khugepaged (khugepaged collapse_huge_page takes the mmap_sem in write mode in addition to the anon_vma lock). If pmd_trans_huge returns false, you just fallback in the old code paths. If instead pmd_trans_huge returns true, you have to take the page table lock (pmd_lock()) and re-run pmd_trans_huge. Taking the -page table lock will prevent the huge pmd to be converted into a +page table lock will prevent the huge pmd being converted into a regular pmd from under you (split_huge_pmd can run in parallel to the pagetable walk). If the second pmd_trans_huge returns false, you should just drop the page table lock and fallback to the old code as -before. Otherwise you can proceed to process the huge pmd and the -hugepage natively. Once finished you can drop the page table lock. +before. Otherwise, you can proceed to process the huge pmd and the +hugepage natively. Once finished, you can drop the page table lock. Refcounts and transparent huge pages ==================================== @@ -122,61 +117,61 @@ Refcounts and transparent huge pages Refcounting on THP is mostly consistent with refcounting on other compound pages: - - get_page()/put_page() and GUP operate in head page's ->_refcount. + - get_page()/put_page() and GUP operate on head page's ->_refcount. - ->_refcount in tail pages is always zero: get_page_unless_zero() never - succeed on tail pages. + succeeds on tail pages. - map/unmap of the pages with PTE entry increment/decrement ->_mapcount on relevant sub-page of the compound page. - - map/unmap of the whole compound page accounted in compound_mapcount + - map/unmap of the whole compound page is accounted for in compound_mapcount (stored in first tail page). For file huge pages, we also increment ->_mapcount of all sub-pages in order to have race-free detection of last unmap of subpages. PageDoubleMap() indicates that the page is *possibly* mapped with PTEs. -For anonymous pages PageDoubleMap() also indicates ->_mapcount in all +For anonymous pages, PageDoubleMap() also indicates ->_mapcount in all subpages is offset up by one. This additional reference is required to get race-free detection of unmap of subpages when we have them mapped with both PMDs and PTEs. -This is optimization required to lower overhead of per-subpage mapcount -tracking. The alternative is alter ->_mapcount in all subpages on each +This optimization is required to lower the overhead of per-subpage mapcount +tracking. The alternative is to alter ->_mapcount in all subpages on each map/unmap of the whole compound page. -For anonymous pages, we set PG_double_map when a PMD of the page got split -for the first time, but still have PMD mapping. The additional references -go away with last compound_mapcount. +For anonymous pages, we set PG_double_map when a PMD of the page is split +for the first time, but still have a PMD mapping. The additional references +go away with the last compound_mapcount. -File pages get PG_double_map set on first map of the page with PTE and -goes away when the page gets evicted from page cache. +File pages get PG_double_map set on the first map of the page with PTE and +goes away when the page gets evicted from the page cache. split_huge_page internally has to distribute the refcounts in the head page to the tail pages before clearing all PG_head/tail bits from the page structures. It can be done easily for refcounts taken by page table -entries. But we don't have enough information on how to distribute any +entries, but we don't have enough information on how to distribute any additional pins (i.e. from get_user_pages). split_huge_page() fails any -requests to split pinned huge page: it expects page count to be equal to -sum of mapcount of all sub-pages plus one (split_huge_page caller must -have reference for head page). +requests to split pinned huge pages: it expects page count to be equal to +the sum of mapcount of all sub-pages plus one (split_huge_page caller must +have a reference to the head page). split_huge_page uses migration entries to stabilize page->_refcount and -page->_mapcount of anonymous pages. File pages just got unmapped. +page->_mapcount of anonymous pages. File pages just get unmapped. -We safe against physical memory scanners too: the only legitimate way -scanner can get reference to a page is get_page_unless_zero(). +We are safe against physical memory scanners too: the only legitimate way +a scanner can get a reference to a page is get_page_unless_zero(). All tail pages have zero ->_refcount until atomic_add(). This prevents the scanner from getting a reference to the tail page up to that point. After the -atomic_add() we don't care about the ->_refcount value. We already known how +atomic_add() we don't care about the ->_refcount value. We already know how many references should be uncharged from the head page. For head page get_page_unless_zero() will succeed and we don't mind. It's -clear where reference should go after split: it will stay on head page. +clear where references should go after split: it will stay on the head page. -Note that split_huge_pmd() doesn't have any limitation on refcounting: +Note that split_huge_pmd() doesn't have any limitations on refcounting: pmd can be split at any point and never fails. Partial unmap and deferred_split_huge_page() @@ -188,10 +183,10 @@ in page_remove_rmap() and queue the THP for splitting if memory pressure comes. Splitting will free up unused subpages. Splitting the page right away is not an option due to locking context in -the place where we can detect partial unmap. It's also might be +the place where we can detect partial unmap. It also might be counterproductive since in many cases partial unmap happens during exit(2) if a THP crosses a VMA boundary. -Function deferred_split_huge_page() is used to queue page for splitting. +The function deferred_split_huge_page() is used to queue a page for splitting. The splitting itself will happen when we get memory pressure via shrinker interface. |