On 26/2/21 12:21 am, Muchun Song wrote: > Hi all, > > This patch series will free some vmemmap pages(struct page structures) > associated with each hugetlbpage when preallocated to save memory. > > In order to reduce the difficulty of the first version of code review. > From this version, we disable PMD/huge page mapping of vmemmap if this > feature was enabled. This accutualy eliminate a bunch of the complex code > doing page table manipulation. When this patch series is solid, we cam add > the code of vmemmap page table manipulation in the future. > > The struct page structures (page structs) are used to describe a physical > page frame. By default, there is a one-to-one mapping from a page frame to > it's corresponding page struct. > > The HugeTLB pages consist of multiple base page size pages and is supported > by many architectures. See hugetlbpage.rst in the Documentation directory > for more details. On the x86 architecture, HugeTLB pages of size 2MB and 1GB > are currently supported. Since the base page size on x86 is 4KB, a 2MB > HugeTLB page consists of 512 base pages and a 1GB HugeTLB page consists of > 4096 base pages. For each base page, there is a corresponding page struct. > > Within the HugeTLB subsystem, only the first 4 page structs are used to > contain unique information about a HugeTLB page. HUGETLB_CGROUP_MIN_ORDER > provides this upper limit. The only 'useful' information in the remaining > page structs is the compound_head field, and this field is the same for all > tail pages. The HUGETLB_CGROUP_MIN_ORDER is only when CGROUP_HUGETLB is enabled, but I guess that does not matter > > By removing redundant page structs for HugeTLB pages, memory can returned to > the buddy allocator for other uses. > > When the system boot up, every 2M HugeTLB has 512 struct page structs which > size is 8 pages(sizeof(struct page) * 512 / PAGE_SIZE). > > HugeTLB struct pages(8 pages) page frame(8 pages) > +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+ > | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 1 | -------------> | 1 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 2 | -------------> | 2 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 3 | -------------> | 3 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 4 | -------------> | 4 | > | 2MB | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 5 | -------------> | 5 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 6 | -------------> | 6 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 7 | -------------> | 7 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | > | | > | | > +-----------+ > > The value of page->compound_head is the same for all tail pages. The first > page of page structs (page 0) associated with the HugeTLB page contains the 4 > page structs necessary to describe the HugeTLB. The only use of the remaining > pages of page structs (page 1 to page 7) is to point to page->compound_head. > Therefore, we can remap pages 2 to 7 to page 1. Only 2 pages of page structs > will be used for each HugeTLB page. This will allow us to free the remaining > 6 pages to the buddy allocator. What is page 1 used for? page 0 carries the 4 struct pages needed, does compound_head need a full page? IOW, why do we need two full pages -- may be the patches have the answer to something I am missing? > > Here is how things look after remapping. > > HugeTLB struct pages(8 pages) page frame(8 pages) > +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+ > | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 1 | -------------> | 1 | > | | +-----------+ +-----------+ > | | | 2 | ----------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ > | | +-----------+ | | | | | > | | | 3 | ------------------+ | | | | > | | +-----------+ | | | | > | | | 4 | --------------------+ | | | > | 2MB | +-----------+ | | | > | | | 5 | ----------------------+ | | > | | +-----------+ | | > | | | 6 | ------------------------+ | > | | +-----------+ | > | | | 7 | --------------------------+ > | | +-----------+ > | | > | | > | | > +-----------+ > > When a HugeTLB is freed to the buddy system, we should allocate 6 pages for > vmemmap pages and restore the previous mapping relationship. > Can these 6 pages come from the hugeTLB page itself? When you say 6 pages, I presume you mean 6 pages of PAGE_SIZE > Apart from 2MB HugeTLB page, we also have 1GB HugeTLB page. It is similar > to the 2MB HugeTLB page. We also can use this approach to free the vmemmap > pages. > > In this case, for the 1GB HugeTLB page, we can save 4094 pages. This is a > very substantial gain. On our server, run some SPDK/QEMU applications which > will use 1024GB hugetlbpage. With this feature enabled, we can save ~16GB > (1G hugepage)/~12GB (2MB hugepage) memory. Thanks, Balbir Singh