On 26/2/21 12:21 am, Muchun Song wrote:

Hi all,

This patch series will free some vmemmap pages(struct page structures)
associated with each hugetlbpage when preallocated to save memory.

In order to reduce the difficulty of the first version of code review.
From this version, we disable PMD/huge page mapping of vmemmap if this
feature was enabled. This accutualy eliminate a bunch of the complex code
doing page table manipulation. When this patch series is solid, we cam add
the code of vmemmap page table manipulation in the future.

The struct page structures (page structs) are used to describe a physical
page frame. By default, there is a one-to-one mapping from a page frame to
it's corresponding page struct.

The HugeTLB pages consist of multiple base page size pages and is supported
by many architectures. See hugetlbpage.rst in the Documentation directory
for more details. On the x86 architecture, HugeTLB pages of size 2MB and 1GB
are currently supported. Since the base page size on x86 is 4KB, a 2MB
HugeTLB page consists of 512 base pages and a 1GB HugeTLB page consists of
4096 base pages. For each base page, there is a corresponding page struct.

Within the HugeTLB subsystem, only the first 4 page structs are used to
contain unique information about a HugeTLB page. HUGETLB_CGROUP_MIN_ORDER
provides this upper limit. The only 'useful' information in the remaining
page structs is the compound_head field, and this field is the same for all
tail pages.

The HUGETLB_CGROUP_MIN_ORDER is only when CGROUP_HUGETLB is enabled, but I guess
that does not matter

By removing redundant page structs for HugeTLB pages, memory can returned to
the buddy allocator for other uses.

When the system boot up, every 2M HugeTLB has 512 struct page structs which
size is 8 pages(sizeof(struct page) * 512 / PAGE_SIZE).

    HugeTLB                  struct pages(8 pages)         page frame(8 pages)
 +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+   mapping to   +-----------+
 |           |                     |     0     | -------------> |     0     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     1     | -------------> |     1     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     2     | -------------> |     2     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     3     | -------------> |     3     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     4     | -------------> |     4     |
 |    2MB    |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     5     | -------------> |     5     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     6     | -------------> |     6     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     7     | -------------> |     7     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |
 |           |
 |           |
 +-----------+

The value of page->compound_head is the same for all tail pages. The first
page of page structs (page 0) associated with the HugeTLB page contains the 4
page structs necessary to describe the HugeTLB. The only use of the remaining
pages of page structs (page 1 to page 7) is to point to page->compound_head.
Therefore, we can remap pages 2 to 7 to page 1. Only 2 pages of page structs
will be used for each HugeTLB page. This will allow us to free the remaining
6 pages to the buddy allocator.

What is page 1 used for? page 0 carries the 4 struct pages needed, does compound_head
need a full page? IOW, why do we need two full pages -- may be the patches have the
answer to something I am missing?

Here is how things look after remapping.

    HugeTLB                  struct pages(8 pages)         page frame(8 pages)
 +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+   mapping to   +-----------+
 |           |                     |     0     | -------------> |     0     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     1     | -------------> |     1     |
 |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
 |           |                     |     2     | ----------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
 |           |                     +-----------+                   | | | | |
 |           |                     |     3     | ------------------+ | | | |
 |           |                     +-----------+                     | | | |
 |           |                     |     4     | --------------------+ | | |
 |    2MB    |                     +-----------+                       | | |
 |           |                     |     5     | ----------------------+ | |
 |           |                     +-----------+                         | |
 |           |                     |     6     | ------------------------+ |
 |           |                     +-----------+                           |
 |           |                     |     7     | --------------------------+
 |           |                     +-----------+
 |           |
 |           |
 |           |
 +-----------+

When a HugeTLB is freed to the buddy system, we should allocate 6 pages for
vmemmap pages and restore the previous mapping relationship.

Can these 6 pages come from the hugeTLB page itself? When you say 6 pages,
I presume you mean 6 pages of PAGE_SIZE

Apart from 2MB HugeTLB page, we also have 1GB HugeTLB page. It is similar
to the 2MB HugeTLB page. We also can use this approach to free the vmemmap
pages.

In this case, for the 1GB HugeTLB page, we can save 4094 pages. This is a
very substantial gain. On our server, run some SPDK/QEMU applications which
will use 1024GB hugetlbpage. With this feature enabled, we can save ~16GB
(1G hugepage)/~12GB (2MB hugepage) memory.

Thanks,
Balbir Singh