== Design ==
-- "graceful fallback": mm components which don't have transparent
- hugepage knowledge fall back to breaking a transparent hugepage and
- working on the regular pages and their respective regular pmd/pte
- mappings
+- "graceful fallback": mm components which don't have transparent hugepage
+ knowledge fall back to breaking huge pmd mapping into table of ptes and,
+ if necessary, split a transparent hugepage. Therefore these components
+ can continue working on the regular pages or regular pte mappings.
- if a hugepage allocation fails because of memory fragmentation,
regular pages should be gracefully allocated instead and mixed in
of pages that should be collapsed into one huge page but failed
the allocation.
-thp_split is incremented every time a huge page is split into base
+thp_split_page is incremented every time a huge page is split into base
pages. This can happen for a variety of reasons but a common
reason is that a huge page is old and is being reclaimed.
+ This action implies splitting all PMD the page mapped with.
+
+thp_split_page_failed is is incremented if kernel fails to split huge
+ page. This can happen if the page was pinned by somebody.
+
+thp_split_pmd is incremented every time a PMD split into table of PTEs.
+ This can happen, for instance, when application calls mprotect() or
+ munmap() on part of huge page. It doesn't split huge page, only
+ page table entry.
thp_zero_page_alloc is incremented every time a huge zero page is
successfully allocated. It includes allocations which where
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 (while serializing properly against
-split_huge_page() to avoid the head and tail pages to disappear from
-under it, see the futex code to see an example of that, hugetlbfs also
-needed special handling in futex code for similar reasons).
+to check head page instead. Taking reference on any head/tail page would
+prevent 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
== Graceful fallback ==
Code walking pagetables but unware about huge pmds can simply call
-split_huge_page_pmd(vma, addr, pmd) where the pmd is the one returned by
+split_huge_pmd(vma, pmd, addr) where the pmd is the one returned by
pmd_offset. It's trivial to make the code transparent hugepage aware
-by just grepping for "pmd_offset" and adding split_huge_page_pmd where
+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
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
calling split_huge_page(page). This is what the Linux VM does before
-it tries to swapout the hugepage for example.
+it tries to swapout the hugepage for example. split_huge_page() can fail
+if the page is pinned and you must handle this correctly.
Example to make mremap.c transparent hugepage aware with a one liner
change:
return NULL;
pmd = pmd_offset(pud, addr);
-+ split_huge_page_pmd(vma, addr, pmd);
++ split_huge_pmd(vma, pmd, addr);
if (pmd_none_or_clear_bad(pmd))
return NULL;
== Locking in hugepage aware code ==
We want as much code as possible hugepage aware, as calling
-split_huge_page() or split_huge_page_pmd() has a cost.
+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
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
-mm->page_table_lock and re-run pmd_trans_huge. Taking the
-page_table_lock will prevent the huge pmd to be converted into a
-regular pmd from under you (split_huge_page can run in parallel to 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
+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 should run pmd_trans_splitting on the pmd. In
-case pmd_trans_splitting returns true, it means split_huge_page is
-already in the middle of splitting the page. So if pmd_trans_splitting
-returns true it's enough to drop the page_table_lock and call
-wait_split_huge_page and then fallback the old code paths. You are
-guaranteed by the time wait_split_huge_page returns, the pmd isn't
-huge anymore. If pmd_trans_splitting returns false, you can proceed to
-process the huge pmd and the hugepage natively. Once finished you can
-drop the page_table_lock.
-
-== compound_lock, get_user_pages and put_page ==
+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.
+
+== 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 ->_count.
+
+ - ->_count in tail pages is always zero: get_page_unless_zero() never
+ succeed 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
+ (stored in first tail page).
+
+PageDoubleMap() indicates that ->_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
+map/unmap of the whole compound page.
+
+We set PG_double_map when a PMD of the page got split for the first time,
+but still have PMD mapping. The addtional references go away with last
+compound_mapcount.
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 do that easily for refcounts taken by huge pmd
-mappings. But the GUI API as created by hugetlbfs (that returns head
-and tail pages if running get_user_pages on an address backed by any
-hugepage), requires the refcount to be accounted on the tail pages and
-not only in the head pages, if we want to be able to run
-split_huge_page while there are gup pins established on any tail
-page. Failure to be able to run split_huge_page if there's any gup pin
-on any tail page, would mean having to split all hugepages upfront in
-get_user_pages which is unacceptable as too many gup users are
-performance critical and they must work natively on hugepages like
-they work natively on hugetlbfs already (hugetlbfs is simpler because
-hugetlbfs pages cannot be split so there wouldn't be requirement of
-accounting the pins on the tail pages for hugetlbfs). If we wouldn't
-account the gup refcounts on the tail pages during gup, we won't know
-anymore which tail page is pinned by gup and which is not while we run
-split_huge_page. But we still have to add the gup pin to the head page
-too, to know when we can free the compound page in case it's never
-split during its lifetime. That requires changing not just
-get_page, but put_page as well so that when put_page runs on a tail
-page (and only on a tail page) it will find its respective head page,
-and then it will decrease the head page refcount in addition to the
-tail page refcount. To obtain a head page reliably and to decrease its
-refcount without race conditions, put_page has to serialize against
-__split_huge_page_refcount using a special per-page lock called
-compound_lock.
+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
+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).
+
+split_huge_page uses migration entries to stabilize page->_count and
+page->_mapcount.
+
+We safe against physical memory scanners too: the only legitimate way
+scanner can get reference to a page is get_page_unless_zero().
+
+All tail pages has zero ->_count until atomic_add(). It prevent scanner
+from geting reference to tail page up to the point. After the atomic_add()
+we don't care about ->_count value. We already known how many references
+with should uncharge from 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.
+
+Note that split_huge_pmd() doesn't have any limitation on refcounting:
+pmd can be split at any point and never fails.
+
+== Partial unmap and deferred_split_huge_page() ==
+
+Unmapping part of THP (with munmap() or other way) is not going to free
+memory immediately. Instead, we detect that a subpage of THP is not in use
+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
+counterproductive since in many cases partial unmap unmap happens during
+exit(2) if an THP crosses VMA boundary.
+
+Function deferred_split_huge_page() is used to queue page for splitting.
+The splitting itself will happen when we get memory pressure via shrinker
+interface.
projects / cascardo / linux.git / commitdiff