On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 12:12 -0800, Tony Luck wrote: > On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > struct mmu_gather { > > struct mm_struct *mm; > > unsigned int nr; /* == ~0U => fast mode */ > > + unsigned int max; > > unsigned char fullmm; /* non-zero means full mm flush */ > > unsigned char need_flush; /* really unmapped some PTEs? */ > > unsigned long start_addr; > > unsigned long end_addr; > > - struct page *pages[FREE_PTE_NR]; > > + struct page **pages; > > + struct page *local[8]; > > }; > > Overall it looks OK - builds, boots & runs too. One question about > the above bit ... why "8" elements in the local[] array? This ought to be > a #define, maybe with a comment explaining the significance. It doesn't > seem to fill out struct mmu_gather to some "nice" size. I can't think > of why batching 8 at a time (in the fallback cannot allocate **pages case) > is a good number. So is there some science to the choice, or did you > pluck 8 out of the air? Yeah, pretty much a random number small enough to make struct mmu_gather fit on stack, the reason its not 1 is that a few more entries increase performance a little and freeing more pages increases the chance the page allocation works next time around. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom policy in Canada: sign http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/ Don't email: <a href