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authorChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>2007-10-16 01:24:13 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2007-10-16 09:42:51 -0700
commit8f6aac419bd590f535fb110875a51f7db2b62b5b (patch)
tree64e73e9f7a4b5a68648a2b4b16e66307c3d8d3cf /mm/Kconfig
parent540557b9439ec19668553830c90222f9fb0c2e95 (diff)
Generic Virtual Memmap support for SPARSEMEM
SPARSEMEM is a pretty nice framework that unifies quite a bit of code over all the arches. It would be great if it could be the default so that we can get rid of various forms of DISCONTIG and other variations on memory maps. So far what has hindered this are the additional lookups that SPARSEMEM introduces for virt_to_page and page_address. This goes so far that the code to do this has to be kept in a separate function and cannot be used inline. This patch introduces a virtual memmap mode for SPARSEMEM, in which the memmap is mapped into a virtually contigious area, only the active sections are physically backed. This allows virt_to_page page_address and cohorts become simple shift/add operations. No page flag fields, no table lookups, nothing involving memory is required. The two key operations pfn_to_page and page_to_page become: #define __pfn_to_page(pfn) (vmemmap + (pfn)) #define __page_to_pfn(page) ((page) - vmemmap) By having a virtual mapping for the memmap we allow simple access without wasting physical memory. As kernel memory is typically already mapped 1:1 this introduces no additional overhead. The virtual mapping must be big enough to allow a struct page to be allocated and mapped for all valid physical pages. This vill make a virtual memmap difficult to use on 32 bit platforms that support 36 address bits. However, if there is enough virtual space available and the arch already maps its 1-1 kernel space using TLBs (f.e. true of IA64 and x86_64) then this technique makes SPARSEMEM lookups even more efficient than CONFIG_FLATMEM. FLATMEM needs to read the contents of the mem_map variable to get the start of the memmap and then add the offset to the required entry. vmemmap is a constant to which we can simply add the offset. This patch has the potential to allow us to make SPARSMEM the default (and even the only) option for most systems. It should be optimal on UP, SMP and NUMA on most platforms. Then we may even be able to remove the other memory models: FLATMEM, DISCONTIG etc. [apw@shadowen.org: config cleanups, resplit code etc] [kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com: Fix sparsemem_vmemmap init] [apw@shadowen.org: vmemmap: remove excess debugging] [apw@shadowen.org: simplify initialisation code and reduce duplication] [apw@shadowen.org: pull out the vmemmap code into its own file] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'mm/Kconfig')
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