Re: [PATCH 03/12] mm: Share the anon_vma ref counts between KSMand page migration

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Sat Feb 20 2010 - 04:29:42 EST


On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 07:16:13PM -0500, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On 02/19/2010 04:58 PM, Mel Gorman wrote:
>
>> external_refcount is about as good as I can think of to explain what's
>> going on :/
>
> Sounds "good" to me. Much better than giving the wrong
> impression that this is the only refcount for the anon_vma.
>

Have renamed it so. If/when this all gets merged, I'll look into what's
required to make this a "real" refcount rather than the existing locking
mechanism. I'm very wary though because even with your anon_vma changes to
avoid excessive sharing, a refcount in there that is used in all paths might
become a hotly contended cache line. i.e. it might look nice, but it might
be a performance hit. It needs to be done carefully and as a separate
series.

--
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick IBM Dublin Software Lab
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