On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 2014-07-15 at 16:36 -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote: >> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxx> wrote: >> > On Tue, 2014-07-15 at 12:56 -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote: >> >> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > This patch changes reserve_memtype() to handle the new WT type. >> >> > When (!pat_enabled && new_type), it continues to set either WB >> >> > or UC- to *new_type. When pat_enabled, it can reserve a given >> >> > non-RAM range for WT. At this point, it may not reserve a RAM >> >> > range for WT since reserve_ram_pages_type() uses the page flags >> >> > limited to three memory types, WB, WC and UC. >> >> >> >> FWIW, last time I looked at this, it seemed like all the fancy >> >> reserve_ram_pages stuff was unnecessary: shouldn't the RAM type be >> >> easy to track in the direct map page tables? >> > >> > Are you referring the direct map page tables as the kernel page >> > directory tables (pgd/pud/..)? >> > >> > I think it needs to be able to keep track of the memory type per a >> > physical memory range, not per a translation, in order to prevent >> > aliasing of the memory type. >> >> Actual RAM (the lowmem kind, which is all of it on x86_64) is mapped >> linearly somewhere in kernel address space. The pagetables for that >> mapping could be used as the canonical source of the memory type for >> the ram range in question. >> >> This only works for lowmem, so maybe it's not a good idea to rely on it. > > Right. > > I think using struct page table for the RAM ranges is a good way for > saving memory, but I wonder how often the RAM ranges are mapped other > than WB... If not often, reserve_memtype() could simply call > rbt_memtype_check_insert() for all ranges, including RAM. > > In this patch, I left using reserve_ram_pages_type() since I do not see > much reason to use WT for RAM, either. I hereby predict that someone, some day, will build a system with nonvolatile "RAM", and someone will want this feature. Just saying :) More realistically, someone might want to write a silly driver that lets programs mmap some WT memory for testing. --Andy -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>