Re: [PATCH] - Increase max physical memory size of x86_64

From: Chris Snook
Date: Tue Mar 25 2008 - 17:03:30 EST


Jack Steiner wrote:
On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 05:41:54PM +0100, Andreas Herrmann wrote:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 08:31:57AM -0500, Jack Steiner wrote:
Increase the maximum physical address size of x86_64 system
to 44-bits. This is in preparation for future chips that
support larger physical memory sizes.
Shouldn't this be increased to 48?
AMD family 10h CPUs actually support 48 bits for the
physical address.

You are probably correct but I don't work with AMD processors
and don't understand their requirements. If someone
wants to submit a patch to support larger phys memory sizes,
I certainly have no objections....

The only advantage 44 bits has over 48 bits is that it allows us to uniquely identify 4k physical pages with 32 bits, potentially allowing for tighter packing of certain structures. Do we have any code that does this, and if so, is it a worthwhile optimization?

Personally, I think we should support the full capability of the hardware, but I don't have a 17 TB Opteron box to test with.

-- Chris
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/