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> --- -v2: * return at the 1st beginning for a large folio according to David's comment, thanks! -v1: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20240308085653.124180-1-21cnbao@xxxxxxxxx/ mm/memory.c | 10 ++++++++++ 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c index e17669d4f72f..f2bc6dd15eb8 100644 --- a/mm/memory.c +++ b/mm/memory.c @@ -3498,6 +3498,16 @@ static vm_fault_t wp_page_shared(struct vm_fault *vmf, struct folio *folio) static bool wp_can_reuse_anon_folio(struct folio *folio, struct vm_area_struct *vma) { + /* + * We could currently only reuse a subpage of a large folio if no + * other subpages of the large folios are still mapped. However, + * let's just consistently not reuse subpages even if we could + * reuse in that scenario, and give back a large folio a bit + * sooner. + */ + if (folio_test_large(folio)) + return false; + /* * We have to verify under folio lock: these early checks are * just an optimization to avoid locking the folio and freeing -- 2.34.1