| |
+-----------+
-The value of page->compound_info is the same for all tail pages. The first
-page of ``struct page`` (page 0) associated with the HugeTLB page contains the 4
-``struct page`` necessary to describe the HugeTLB. The only use of the remaining
-pages of ``struct page`` (page 1 to page 7) is to point to page->compound_info.
-Therefore, we can remap pages 1 to 7 to page 0. Only 1 page of ``struct page``
-will be used for each HugeTLB page. This will allow us to free the remaining
-7 pages to the buddy allocator.
+The first page of ``struct page`` (page 0) associated with the HugeTLB page
+contains the 4 ``struct page`` necessary to describe the HugeTLB. The remaining
+pages of ``struct page`` (page 1 to page 7) are tail pages.
+
+The optimization is only applied when the size of the struct page is a power
+of 2. In this case, all tail pages of the same order are identical. See
+compound_head(). This allows us to remap the tail pages of the vmemmap to a
+shared, read-only page. The head page is also remapped to a new page. This
+allows the original vmemmap pages to be freed.
Here is how things look after remapping::
- HugeTLB struct pages(8 pages) page frame(8 pages)
- +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+
- | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 |
- | | +-----------+ +-----------+
- | | | 1 | ---------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
- | | +-----------+ | | | | | |
- | | | 2 | -----------------+ | | | | |
- | | +-----------+ | | | | |
- | | | 3 | -------------------+ | | | |
- | | +-----------+ | | | |
- | | | 4 | ---------------------+ | | |
- | PMD | +-----------+ | | |
- | level | | 5 | -----------------------+ | |
- | mapping | +-----------+ | |
- | | | 6 | -------------------------+ |
- | | +-----------+ |
- | | | 7 | ---------------------------+
+ HugeTLB struct pages(8 pages) page frame (new)
+ +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +----------------+
+ | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 |
+ | | +-----------+ +----------------+
+ | | | 1 | ------┐
+ | | +-----------+ |
+ | | | 2 | ------┼ +----------------------------+
+ | | +-----------+ | | A single, per-zone page |
+ | | | 3 | ------┼------> | frame shared among all |
+ | | +-----------+ | | hugepages of the same size |
+ | | | 4 | ------┼ +----------------------------+
+ | | +-----------+ |
+ | | | 5 | ------┼
+ | PMD | +-----------+ |
+ | level | | 6 | ------┼
+ | mapping | +-----------+ |
+ | | | 7 | ------┘
| | +-----------+
| |
| |
(last) level. So this type of HugeTLB page can be optimized only when its
size of the ``struct page`` structs is greater than **1** page.
-Notice: The head vmemmap page is not freed to the buddy allocator and all
-tail vmemmap pages are mapped to the head vmemmap page frame. So we can see
-more than one ``struct page`` struct with ``PG_head`` (e.g. 8 per 2 MB HugeTLB
-page) associated with each HugeTLB page. The ``compound_head()`` can handle
-this correctly. There is only **one** head ``struct page``, the tail
-``struct page`` with ``PG_head`` are fake head ``struct page``. We need an
-approach to distinguish between those two different types of ``struct page`` so
-that ``compound_head()`` can return the real head ``struct page`` when the
-parameter is the tail ``struct page`` but with ``PG_head``.
-
Device DAX
==========