Re: [PATCH 1/4] arm64: request contpte-sized folios for exec memory
From: "David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>
Date: 2026-03-19 07:35:38
Also in:
linux-fsdevel, linux-mm, lkml
From: "David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>
Date: 2026-03-19 07:35:38
Also in:
linux-fsdevel, linux-mm, lkml
On 3/10/26 15:51, Usama Arif wrote:
exec_folio_order() was introduced [1] to request readahead of executable file-backed pages at an arch-preferred folio order, so that the hardware can coalesce contiguous PTEs into fewer iTLB entries (contpte). The current implementation uses ilog2(SZ_64K >> PAGE_SHIFT), which requests 64K folios. This is optimal for 4K base pages (where CONT_PTES = 16, contpte size = 64K), but suboptimal for 16K and 64K base pages: Page size | Before (order) | After (order) | contpte ----------|----------------|---------------|-------- 4K | 4 (64K) | 4 (64K) | Yes (unchanged) 16K | 2 (64K) | 7 (2M) | Yes (new) 64K | 0 (64K) | 5 (2M) | Yes (new) For 16K pages, CONT_PTES = 128 and the contpte size is 2M (order 7). For 64K pages, CONT_PTES = 32 and the contpte size is 2M (order 5). Use ilog2(CONT_PTES) instead, which directly evaluates to contpte-aligned order for all page sizes. The worst-case waste is bounded to one folio (up to 2MB - 64KB) at the end of the file, since page_cache_ra_order() reduces the folio order near EOF to avoid allocating past i_size.
So, if you have a smallish text segment in a larger file, we'd always try to allocate 2M on 16k/64k? That feels wrong. Asking the other way around: why not also use 2M on a 4k system and end up with a PMD? And no, I don't think we should default to that, just emphasizing my point that *maybe* we really want to consider mapping (vma) size as well. -- Cheers, David