Re: [RFC PATCH 1/7 v1]powerpc: Free up four PTE bits to accommodate memory keys

From: Ram Pai
Date: Tue Jun 13 2017 - 17:52:39 EST


On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 10:22:43AM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V wrote:
> Ram Pai <linuxram@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Rearrange PTE bits to free up bits 3, 4, 5 and 6 for
> > memory keys. Bit 3, 4, 5, 6 and 57 shall be used for memory
> > keys.
> >
> > The patch does the following change to the 64K PTE format
> >
> > H_PAGE_BUSY moves from bit 3 to bit 7
> > H_PAGE_F_SECOND which occupied bit 4 moves to the second part
> > of the pte.
> > H_PAGE_F_GIX which occupied bit 5, 6 and 7 also moves to the
> > second part of the pte.
> >
> > The second part of the PTE will hold
> > a (H_PAGE_F_SECOND|H_PAGE_F_GIX) for 64K page backed pte,
> > and sixteen (H_PAGE_F_SECOND|H_PAGE_F_GIX) for 4k backed
> > pte.
> >
> > the four bits((H_PAGE_F_SECOND|H_PAGE_F_GIX) that represent a slot
> > is initialized to 0xF indicating a invalid slot. if a hashpage does
> > get allocated to the 0xF slot, it is released and not used. In
> > other words, even though 0xF is a valid slot we discard it and
> > consider it as invalid slot(HPTE_SOFT_INVALID). This gives us an
> > opportunity to not depend on a bit in the primary PTE in order to
> > determine the validity of a slot.
> >
> > When we release a 0xF slot we also release a legitimate primary
> > slot and unmap that entry. This is to ensure that we do get
> > a legimate non-0xF slot the next time we retry for a slot.
> >
> > Though treating 0xF slot as invalid reduces the number of available
> > slots and make have a effect on the performance, the probabilty
> > of hitting a 0xF is extermely low.
> >
> > Compared to the current scheme, the above described scheme reduces
> > the number of false hash table updates significantly and has the
> > added advantage of releasing four valuable PTE bits for other
> > purpose.
> >
> > This idea was jointly developed by Paul Mackerras, Aneesh, Michael
> > Ellermen and myself.
> >
> > 4K PTE format remain unchanged currently.
> >
>
> Can you also split this patch into two. One which changes
> __hash_page_4k() ie, linux pte format w.r.t 4k hash pte. Second patch
> with changes w.r.t __hash_page_64k() ie, pte format w.r.t 64k hash pte.

ok. A v2 version of the patch series will be out in a day or two.
RP