Re: [PATCH v2 01/14] mm: Batch-copy PTE ranges during fork()

[Barry Song]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 1:21 AM Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 28/11/2023 21:06, Barry Song wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 11:49 PM Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 28/11/2023 09:49, Barry Song wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 10:14 PM Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> On 27/11/2023 20:34, Barry Song wrote:
> >>>>> On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 12:07 AM Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On 27/11/2023 10:28, Barry Song wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 11:11 PM Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 27/11/2023 09:59, Barry Song wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 10:35 PM Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> On 27/11/2023 08:42, Barry Song wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +           for (i = 0; i < nr; i++, page++) {
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                   if (anon) {
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           /*
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                            * If this page may have been pinned by the
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                            * parent process, copy the page immediately for
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                            * the child so that we'll always guarantee the
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                            * pinned page won't be randomly replaced in the
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                            * future.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                            */
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           if (unlikely(page_try_dup_anon_rmap(
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                           page, false, src_vma))) {
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                   if (i != 0)
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                           break;
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                   /* Page may be pinned, we have to copy. */
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                   return copy_present_page(
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                           dst_vma, src_vma, dst_pte,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                           src_pte, addr, rss, prealloc,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                                           page);
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           }
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           rss[MM_ANONPAGES]++;
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           VM_BUG_ON(PageAnonExclusive(page));
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                   } else {
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           page_dup_file_rmap(page, false);
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                           rss[mm_counter_file(page)]++;
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +                   }
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>             }
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> -           rss[MM_ANONPAGES]++;
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> -   } else if (page) {
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> -           folio_get(folio);
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> -           page_dup_file_rmap(page, false);
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> -           rss[mm_counter_file(page)]++;
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +           nr = i;
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> +           folio_ref_add(folio, nr);
> >>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>> You're changing the order of mapcount vs. refcount increment. Don't.
> >>>>>>>>>>>> Make sure your refcount >= mapcount.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>> You can do that easily by doing the folio_ref_add(folio, nr) first and
> >>>>>>>>>>>> then decrementing in case of error accordingly. Errors due to pinned
> >>>>>>>>>>>> pages are the corner case.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>> I'll note that it will make a lot of sense to have batch variants of
> >>>>>>>>>>>> page_try_dup_anon_rmap() and page_dup_file_rmap().
> >>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> i still don't understand why it is not a entire map+1, but an increment
> >>>>>>>>>>> in each basepage.
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Because we are PTE-mapping the folio, we have to account each individual page.
> >>>>>>>>>> If we accounted the entire folio, where would we unaccount it? Each page can be
> >>>>>>>>>> unmapped individually (e.g. munmap() part of the folio) so need to account each
> >>>>>>>>>> page. When PMD mapping, the whole thing is either mapped or unmapped, and its
> >>>>>>>>>> atomic, so we can account the entire thing.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Hi Ryan,
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> There is no problem. for example, a large folio is entirely mapped in
> >>>>>>>>> process A with CONPTE,
> >>>>>>>>> and only page2 is mapped in process B.
> >>>>>>>>> then we will have
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> entire_map = 0
> >>>>>>>>> page0.map = -1
> >>>>>>>>> page1.map = -1
> >>>>>>>>> page2.map = 0
> >>>>>>>>> page3.map = -1
> >>>>>>>>> ....
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> as long as it is a CONTPTE large folio, there is no much difference with
> >>>>>>>>>>> PMD-mapped large folio. it has all the chance to be DoubleMap and need
> >>>>>>>>>>> split.
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> When A and B share a CONTPTE large folio, we do madvise(DONTNEED) or any
> >>>>>>>>>>> similar things on a part of the large folio in process A,
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> this large folio will have partially mapped subpage in A (all CONTPE bits
> >>>>>>>>>>> in all subpages need to be removed though we only unmap a part of the
> >>>>>>>>>>> large folioas HW requires consistent CONTPTEs); and it has entire map in
> >>>>>>>>>>> process B(all PTEs are still CONPTES in process B).
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> isn't it more sensible for this large folios to have entire_map = 0(for
> >>>>>>>>>>> process B), and subpages which are still mapped in process A has map_count
> >>>>>>>>>>> =0? (start from -1).
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>> Especially, the batch variant of page_try_dup_anon_rmap() would only
> >>>>>>>>>>>> check once if the folio maybe pinned, and in that case, you can simply
> >>>>>>>>>>>> drop all references again. So you either have all or no ptes to process,
> >>>>>>>>>>>> which makes that code easier.
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> I'm afraid this doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps I've misunderstood. But
> >>>>>>>>>> fundamentally you can only use entire_mapcount if its only possible to map and
> >>>>>>>>>> unmap the whole folio atomically.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> My point is that CONTPEs should either all-set in all 16 PTEs or all are dropped
> >>>>>>>>> in 16 PTEs. if all PTEs have CONT, it is entirely mapped; otherwise,
> >>>>>>>>> it is partially
> >>>>>>>>> mapped. if a large folio is mapped in one processes with all CONTPTEs
> >>>>>>>>> and meanwhile in another process with partial mapping(w/o CONTPTE), it is
> >>>>>>>>> DoubleMapped.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> There are 2 problems with your proposal, as I see it;
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> 1) the core-mm is not enlightened for CONTPTE mappings. As far as it is
> >>>>>>>> concerned, its just mapping a bunch of PTEs. So it has no hook to inc/dec
> >>>>>>>> entire_mapcount. The arch code is opportunistically and *transparently* managing
> >>>>>>>> the CONT_PTE bit.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> 2) There is nothing to say a folio isn't *bigger* than the contpte block; it may
> >>>>>>>> be 128K and be mapped with 2 contpte blocks. Or even a PTE-mapped THP (2M) and
> >>>>>>>> be mapped with 32 contpte blocks. So you can't say it is entirely mapped
> >>>>>>>> unless/until ALL of those blocks are set up. And then of course each block could
> >>>>>>>> be unmapped unatomically.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> For the PMD case there are actually 2 properties that allow using the
> >>>>>>>> entire_mapcount optimization; It's atomically mapped/unmapped through the PMD
> >>>>>>>> and we know that the folio is exactly PMD sized (since it must be at least PMD
> >>>>>>>> sized to be able to map it with the PMD, and we don't allocate THPs any bigger
> >>>>>>>> than PMD size). So one PMD map or unmap operation corresponds to exactly one
> >>>>>>>> *entire* map or unmap. That is not true when we are PTE mapping.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> well. Thanks for clarification. based on the above description, i agree the
> >>>>>>> current code might make more sense by always using mapcount in subpage.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I gave my proposals as  I thought we were always CONTPTE size for small-THP
> >>>>>>> then we could drop the loop to iterate 16 times rmap. if we do it
> >>>>>>> entirely, we only
> >>>>>>> need to do dup rmap once for all 16 PTEs by increasing entire_map.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Well its always good to have the discussion - so thanks for the ideas. I think
> >>>>>> there is a bigger question lurking here; should we be exposing the concept of
> >>>>>> contpte mappings to the core-mm rather than burying it in the arm64 arch code?
> >>>>>> I'm confident that would be a huge amount of effort and the end result would be
> >>>>>> similar performace to what this approach gives. One potential benefit of letting
> >>>>>> core-mm control it is that it would also give control to core-mm over the
> >>>>>> granularity of access/dirty reporting (my approach implicitly ties it to the
> >>>>>> folio). Having sub-folio access tracking _could_ potentially help with future
> >>>>>> work to make THP size selection automatic, but we are not there yet, and I think
> >>>>>> there are other (simpler) ways to achieve the same thing. So my view is that
> >>>>>> _not_ exposing it to core-mm is the right way for now.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Hi Ryan,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> We(OPPO) started a similar project like you even before folio was imported to
> >>>>> mainline, we have deployed the dynamic hugepage(that is how we name it)
> >>>>> on millions of mobile phones on real products and kernels before 5.16,  making
> >>>>> a huge success on performance improvement. for example, you may
> >>>>> find the out-of-tree 5.15 source code here
> >>>>
> >>>> Oh wow, thanks for reaching out and explaining this - I have to admit I feel
> >>>> embarrassed that I clearly didn't do enough research on the prior art because I
> >>>> wasn't aware of your work. So sorry about that.
> >>>>
> >>>> I sensed that you had a different model for how this should work vs what I've
> >>>> implemented and now I understand why :). I'll review your stuff and I'm sure
> >>>> I'll have questions. I'm sure each solution has pros and cons.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/tree/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Our modification might not be so clean and has lots of workarounds
> >>>>> just for the stability of products
> >>>>>
> >>>>> We mainly have
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 1. https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/blob/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11/mm/cont_pte_hugepage.c
> >>>>>
> >>>>> some CONTPTE helpers
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2.https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/blob/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11/include/linux/mm.h
> >>>>>
> >>>>> some Dynamic Hugepage APIs
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 3. https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/blob/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11/mm/memory.c
> >>>>>
> >>>>> modified all page faults to support
> >>>>>      (1). allocation of hugepage of 64KB in do_anon_page
> >>>>
> >>>> My Small-Sized THP patch set is handling the equivalent of this.
> >>>
> >>> right, the only difference is that we did a huge-zeropage for reading
> >>> in do_anon_page.
> >>> mapping all large folios to CONTPTE to zero page.
> >>
> >> FWIW, I took a slightly different approach in my original RFC for the zero page
> >> - although I ripped it all out to simplify for the initial series. I found that
> >> it was pretty rare for user space to read multiple consecutive pages without
> >> ever interleving any writes, so I kept the zero page as a base page, but at CoW,
> >> I would expand the allocation to an approprately sized THP. But for the couple
> >> of workloads that I've gone deep with, I found that it made barely any dent on
> >> the amount of memory that ended up contpte-mapped; the vast majority was from
> >> write allocation in do_anonymous_page().
> >
> > the problem is even if there is only one page read in 16 ptes, you
> > will map the page to
> > zero basepage. then while you write another page in these 16 ptes, you
> > lose the chance
> > to become large folio as pte_range_none() becomes false.
> >
> > if we map these 16ptes to contpte zero page, in do_wp_page, we have a
> > good chance
> > to CoW and get a large anon folio.
>
> Yes understood. I think we are a bit off-topic for this patch set though.
> small-sized THP zero pages can be tackled as a separate series once these
> initial series are in. I'd be happy to review a small-sized THP zero page post :)

I agree this can be deferred. Right now our first priority is the
swap-in series, so
I can't give a time when we can send a small-sized THP zero page.

>
> >
> >>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>      (2). CoW hugepage in do_wp_page
> >>>>
> >>>> This isn't handled yet in my patch set; the original RFC implemented it but I
> >>>> removed it in order to strip back to the essential complexity for the initial
> >>>> submission. DavidH has been working on a precise shared vs exclusive map
> >>>> tracking mechanism - if that goes in, it will make CoWing large folios simpler.
> >>>> Out of interest, what workloads benefit most from this?
> >>>
> >>> as a phone, Android has a design almost all processes are forked from zygote.
> >>> thus, CoW happens quite often to all apps.
> >>
> >> Sure. But in my analysis I concluded that most of the memory mapped in zygote is
> >> file-backed and mostly RO so therefore doing THP CoW doesn't help much. Perhaps
> >> there are cases where that conclusion is wrong.
> >
> > CoW is much less than do_anon_page on my phone which is running dynamic
> > hugepage for a couple of hours:
> >
> > OP52D1L1:/ # cat /proc/cont_pte_hugepage/stat
> > ...
> > thp_cow 34669                           ---- CoW a large folio
> > thp_do_anon_pages 1032362     -----  a large folio in do_anon_page
> > ...
> >
> > so it is around 34669/1032362 = 3.35%.
>
> well its actually 34669 / (34669 + 1032362) = 3.25%. But, yes, the point is that
> very few of large folios are lost due to CoW so there is likely to be little
> perf impact. Again, I'd happily review a series that enables this!

right, same as above.

>
> >
> >>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>      (3). copy CONPTEs in copy_pte_range
> >>>>
> >>>> As discussed this is done as part of the contpte patch set, but its not just a
> >>>> simple copy; the arch code will notice and set the CONT_PTE bit as needed.
> >>>
> >>> right, i have read all your unfold and fold stuff today, now i understand your
> >>> approach seems quite nice!
> >>
> >> Great - thanks!
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>      (4). allocate and swap-in Hugepage as a whole in do_swap_page
> >>>>
> >>>> This is going to be a problem but I haven't even looked at this properly yet.
> >>>> The advice so far has been to continue to swap-in small pages only, but improve
> >>>> khugepaged to collapse to small-sized THP. I'll take a look at your code to
> >>>> understand how you did this.
> >>>
> >>> this is also crucial to android phone as swap is always happening
> >>> on an embedded device. if we don't support large folios in swapin,
> >>> our large folios will never come back after it is swapped-out.
> >>>
> >>> and i hated the collapse solution from the first beginning as there is
> >>> never a guarantee to succeed and its overhead is unacceptable to user UI,
> >>> so we supported hugepage allocation in do_swap_page from the first beginning.
> >>
> >> Understood. I agree it would be nice to preserve large folios across swap. I
> >> think this can be layered on top of the current work though.
> >
> > This will be my first priority to use your large folio code on phones.
> > We need a patchset
> > on top of yours :-)
> >
> > without it, we will likely fail. Typically, one phone can have a 4~8GB
> > zRAM to compress
> > a lot of anon pages, if the compression ratio is 1:4, that means
> > uncompressed anon
> > pages are much much more. Thus, while the background app is switched back
> > to foreground, we need those swapped-out large folios back rather than getting
> > small basepages replacement. swap-in basepage is definitely not going to
> > work well on a phone, neither does THP collapse.
>
> Yep understood. From the other thread, it sounds like you are preparing a series
> for large swap-in - looking forward to seeing it!

right. as said, this is the first priority.

>
> >
> >>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 4. https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/blob/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11/mm/vmscan.c
> >>>>> https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/blob/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11/mm/rmap.c
> >>>>>
> >>>>> reclaim hugepage as a whole and LRU optimization for 64KB dynamic hugepage.
> >>>>
> >>>> I think this is all naturally handled by the folio code that exists in modern
> >>>> kernels?
> >>>
> >>> We had a CONTPTE hugepage pool, if the pool is very limited, we let LRU
> >>> reclaim large folios to the pool. as phones are running lots of apps
> >>> and drivers, and the memory is very limited, after a couple of hours,
> >>> it will become very hard to allocate large folios in the original buddy. thus,
> >>> large folios totally disappeared after running the phone for some time
> >>> if we didn't have the pool.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So we are 100% interested in your patchset and hope it can find a way
> >>>>> to land on the
> >>>>> mainline, thus decreasing all the cost we have to maintain out-of-tree
> >>>>> code from a
> >>>>> kernel to another kernel version which we have done on a couple of
> >>>>> kernel versions
> >>>>> before 5.16. Firmly, we are 100% supportive of large anon folios
> >>>>> things you are leading.
> >>>>
> >>>> That's great to hear! Of course Reviewed-By's and Tested-By's will all help move
> >>>> it closer :). If you had any ability to do any A/B performance testing, it would
> >>>> be very interesting to see how this stacks up against your solution - if there
> >>>> are gaps it would be good to know where and develop a plan to plug the gap.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> sure.
> >>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> A big pain was we found lots of races especially on CONTPTE unfolding
> >>>>> and especially a part
> >>>>> of basepages ran away from the 16 CONPTEs group since userspace is
> >>>>> always working
> >>>>> on basepages, having no idea of small-THP.  We ran our code on millions of
> >>>>> real phones, and now we have got them fixed (or maybe "can't reproduce"),
> >>>>> no outstanding issue.
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm going to be brave and say that my solution shouldn't suffer from these
> >>>> problems; but of course the proof is only in the testing. I did a lot of work
> >>>> with our architecture group and micro architects to determine exactly what is
> >>>> and isn't safe; We even tightened the Arm ARM spec very subtlely to allow the
> >>>> optimization in patch 13 (see the commit log for details). Of course this has
> >>>> all been checked with partners and we are confident that all existing
> >>>> implementations conform to the modified wording.
> >>>
> >>> cool. I like your try_unfold/fold code. it seems your code is setting/dropping
> >>> CONT automatically based on ALIGHMENT, Page number etc. Alternatively,
> >>> our code is always stupidly checking some conditions before setting and dropping
> >>> CONT everywhere.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Particularly for the rmap issue we are discussing, our out-of-tree is
> >>>>> using the entire_map for
> >>>>> CONTPTE in the way I sent to you. But I guess we can learn from you to decouple
> >>>>> CONTPTE from mm-core.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> We are doing this in mm/memory.c
> >>>>>
> >>>>> copy_present_cont_pte(struct vm_area_struct *dst_vma, struct
> >>>>> vm_area_struct *src_vma,
> >>>>> pte_t *dst_pte, pte_t *src_pte, unsigned long addr, int *rss,
> >>>>> struct page **prealloc)
> >>>>> {
> >>>>>       struct mm_struct *src_mm = src_vma->vm_mm;
> >>>>>       unsigned long vm_flags = src_vma->vm_flags;
> >>>>>       pte_t pte = *src_pte;
> >>>>>       struct page *page;
> >>>>>
> >>>>>        page = vm_normal_page(src_vma, addr, pte);
> >>>>>       ...
> >>>>>
> >>>>>      get_page(page);
> >>>>>      page_dup_rmap(page, true);   // an entire dup_rmap as you can
> >>>>> see.............
> >>>>>      rss[mm_counter(page)] += HPAGE_CONT_PTE_NR;
> >>>>> }
> >>>>>
> >>>>> and we have a split in mm/cont_pte_hugepage.c to handle partially unmap,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> static void __split_huge_cont_pte_locked(struct vm_area_struct *vma, pte_t *pte,
> >>>>> unsigned long haddr, bool freeze)
> >>>>> {
> >>>>> ...
> >>>>>            if (compound_mapcount(head) > 1 && !TestSetPageDoubleMap(head)) {
> >>>>>                   for (i = 0; i < HPAGE_CONT_PTE_NR; i++)
> >>>>>                            atomic_inc(&head[i]._mapcount);
> >>>>>                  atomic_long_inc(&cont_pte_double_map_count);
> >>>>>            }
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>             if (atomic_add_negative(-1, compound_mapcount_ptr(head))) {
> >>>>>               ...
> >>>>> }
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am not selling our solution any more, but just showing you some differences we
> >>>>> have :-)
> >>>>
> >>>> OK, I understand what you were saying now. I'm currently struggling to see how
> >>>> this could fit into my model. Do you have any workloads and numbers on perf
> >>>> improvement of using entire_mapcount?
> >>>
> >>> TBH, I don't have any data on this as from the first beginning, we were using
> >>> entire_map. So I have no comparison at all.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> BTW, I have concerns that a variable small-THP size will really work
> >>>>>>> as userspace
> >>>>>>> is probably friendly to only one fixed size. for example, userspace
> >>>>>>> heap management
> >>>>>>> might be optimized to a size for freeing memory to the kernel. it is
> >>>>>>> very difficult
> >>>>>>> for the heap to adapt to various sizes at the same time. frequent unmap/free
> >>>>>>> size not equal with, and particularly smaller than small-THP size will
> >>>>>>> defeat all
> >>>>>>> efforts to use small-THP.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I'll admit to not knowing a huge amount about user space allocators. But I will
> >>>>>> say that as currently defined, the small-sized THP interface to user space
> >>>>>> allows a sysadmin to specifically enable the set of sizes that they want; so a
> >>>>>> single size can be enabled. I'm diliberately punting that decision away from the
> >>>>>> kernel for now.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Basically, userspace heap library has a PAGESIZE setting and allows users
> >>>>> to allocate/free all kinds of small objects such as 16,32,64,128,256,512 etc.
> >>>>> The default size is for sure equal to the basepage SIZE. once some objects are
> >>>>> freed by free() and libc get a free "page", userspace heap libraries might free
> >>>>> the PAGESIZE page to kernel by things like MADV_DONTNEED, then zap_pte_range().
> >>>>> it is quite similar with kernel slab.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> so imagine we have small-THP now, but userspace libraries have *NO*
> >>>>> idea at all,  so it can frequently cause unfolding.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> FWIW, My experience with the Speedometer/JavaScript use case is that performance
> >>>>>> is a little bit better when enabling 64+32+16K vs just 64K THP.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Functionally, it will not matter if the allocator is not enlightened for the THP
> >>>>>> size; it can continue to free, and if a partial folio is unmapped it is put on
> >>>>>> the deferred split list, then under memory pressure it is split and the unused
> >>>>>> pages are reclaimed. I guess this is the bit you are concerned about having a
> >
> >>>>>> performance impact?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> right. If this is happening on the majority of small-THP folios, we
> >>>>> don't have performance
> >>>>> improvement, and probably regression instead. This is really true on
> >>>>> real workloads!!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So that is why we really love a per-VMA hint to enable small-THP but
> >>>>> obviously you
> >>>>> have already supported it now by
> >>>>> mm: thp: Introduce per-size thp sysfs interface
> >>>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20231122162950.3854897-4-ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> we can use MADVISE rather than ALWAYS and set fixed size like 64KB, so userspace
> >>>>> can set the VMA flag when it is quite sure this VMA is working with
> >>>>> the alignment
> >>>>> of 64KB?
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, that all exists in the series today. We have also discussed the possibility
> >>>> of adding a new madvise_process() call that would take the set of THP sizes that
> >>>> should be considered. Then you can set different VMAs to use different sizes;
> >>>> the plan was to layer that on top if/when a workload was identified. Sounds like
> >>>> you might be able to help there?
> >>>
> >>> i'm not quite sure as on phones, we are using fixed-size CONTPTE. so we ask
> >>> for either 64KB or 4KB. If we think one VMA is all good to use CONTPTE, we
> >>> set a flag in this VMA and try to allocate 64KB.
> >>
> >> When you say "we set a flag" do you mean user space? Or is there some heuristic
> >> in the kernel?
> >
> > we are using a field extended by the android kernel in vma struct to
> > mark this vma
> > is all good to use CONTPTE. With the upstream solution you are providing, we can
> > remove this dirty code[1].
> > static inline bool vma_is_chp_anonymous(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
> > {
> >             return vma->android_kabi_reserved2 == THP_SWAP_PRIO_MAGIC;
> > }
>
> Sorry I'm not sure I've understood; how does that flag get set in the first
> place? Does user space tell the kernel (via e.g. madvise()) or does the kernel
> set it based on devined heuristics?

Basically we did it in an ugly way, on android, different vma types
have different
names.  For some types of vma, we have optimized them in userspace and tried
to decrease/avoid fragments and unaligned CONTPTEs unfold. So in the kernel,
we compare the name of the vma, if it is an optimized vma type, we set the
field in vma. noted for many cases, we might have to write dirty code as we have
to follow Android kernel's KMI :-)

based on your new sysfs interface, we can move to madvise(HUGEPAGE) and
set 64KB as MADVISE.

BTW, large anon folios can bring disaster to an unoptimized userspace
especially for
a memory limited system, memory footprint can terribly increase. so it
is really nice
to have your new sysfs interface and let userspace decide if it wants
large folios.

>
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8550/blob/oneplus/sm8550_u_14.0.0_oneplus11/include/linux/mm.h#L4031
> >

Thanks
Barry