Re: [RESEND PATCH v7 00/10] Small-sized THP for anonymous memory

From: Ryan Roberts
Date: Tue Nov 28 2023 - 07:15:42 EST


On 28/11/2023 08:48, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Agreed. We are bikeshedding here. But if we really can't swallow "small-sized
>>> THP" then perhaps the most efficient way to move this forwards is to review the
>>> documentation (where "small-sized THP" appears twice in order to differentiate
>>> from PMD-sized THP) - its in patch 3. Perhaps it will be easier to come up with
>>> a good description in the context of those prose? Then once we have that,
>>> hopefully a term will fall out that I'll update the commit logs with.
>>>
>>
>> I will see you over in patch 3, then. I've already looked at it and am going
>> to suggest a long and a short name. The long name is for use in comments and
>> documentation, and the short name is for variable fragments:
>>
>>       Long name:  "pte-mapped THPs"
>>       Short names: pte_thp, or pte-thp
>
> The issue is that any THP can be pte-mapped, even a PMD-sized THP. However, the
> "natural" way to map a PMD-sized THP is using a PMD.
>

How about we just stop trying to come up with a term for the "small-sized THP"
vs "PMD-sized THP" and instead invent a name that covers ALL THP:

"multi-size THP" vs "PMD-sized THP".

Then in the docs we can talk about how multi-size THP introduces the ability to
allocate memory in blocks that are bigger than a base page but smaller than
traditional PMD-size, in increments of a power-of-2 number of pages.