From: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@xxxxxxxx>
In a Copy-on-Write (CoW) scenario, the last subpage will reuse the entire
large folio, resulting in the waste of (nr_pages - 1) pages. This wasted
memory remains allocated until it is either unmapped or memory
reclamation occurs.
The following small program can serve as evidence of this behavior
main()
{
#define SIZE 1024 * 1024 * 1024UL
void *p = malloc(SIZE);
memset(p, 0x11, SIZE);
if (fork() == 0)
_exit(0);
memset(p, 0x12, SIZE);
printf("done\n");
while(1);
}
For example, using a 1024KiB mTHP by:
echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-1024kB/enabled
(1) w/o the patch, it takes 2GiB,
Before running the test program,
/ # free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 5754 84 5692 0 17 5669
Swap: 0 0 0
/ # /a.out &
/ # done
After running the test program,
/ # free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 5754 2149 3627 0 19 3605
Swap: 0 0 0
(2) w/ the patch, it takes 1GiB only,
Before running the test program,
/ # free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 5754 89 5687 0 17 5664
Swap: 0 0 0
/ # /a.out &
/ # done
After running the test program,
/ # free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 5754 1122 4655 0 17 4632
Swap: 0 0 0
This patch migrates the last subpage to a small folio and immediately
returns the large folio to the system. It benefits both memory availability
and anti-fragmentation.
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Lance Yang <ioworker0@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@xxxxxxxx>
---
mm/memory.c | 8 ++++++++
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
index e17669d4f72f..0200bfc15f94 100644
--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -3523,6 +3523,14 @@ static bool wp_can_reuse_anon_folio(struct folio *folio,
folio_unlock(folio);
return false;
}
+ /*
+ * If the last subpage reuses the entire large folio, it would
+ * result in a waste of (nr_pages - 1) pages
+ */
+ if (folio_ref_count(folio) == 1 && folio_test_large(folio)) {
+ folio_unlock(folio);
+ return false;
+ }
/*
* Ok, we've got the only folio reference from our mapping
* and the folio is locked, it's dark out, and we're wearing
--
2.34.1
