Re: [PATCH mm-unstable v19 11/14] mm/khugepaged: Introduce mTHP collapse support
From: "David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>
Date: 2026-06-05 18:03:20
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On 6/5/26 18:14, Nico Pache wrote:
Enable khugepaged to collapse to mTHP orders. This patch implements the
main scanning logic using a bitmap to track occupied pages and the
algorithm to find optimal collapse sizes.
Previous to this patch, PMD collapse had 3 main phases, a light weight
scanning phase (mmap_read_lock) that determines a potential PMD
collapse, an alloc phase (mmap unlocked), then finally heavier collapse
phase (mmap_write_lock).
To enabled mTHP collapse we make the following changes:
During PMD scan phase, track occupied pages in a bitmap. When mTHP
orders are enabled, we remove the restriction of max_ptes_none during the
scan phase to avoid missing potential mTHP collapse candidates. Once we
have scanned the full PMD range and updated the bitmap to track occupied
pages, we use the bitmap to find the optimal mTHP size.
Implement mthp_collapse() to walk forward through the bitmap and
determine the best eligible order for each naturally-aligned region. The
algorithm starts at the beginning of the PMD range and, for each offset,
tries the highest order that fits the alignment. If the number of
occupied PTEs in that region satisfies the max_ptes_none threshold for
that order, a collapse is attempted. On failure, the order is
decremented and the same offset is retried at the next smaller size. Once
the smallest enabled order is exhausted (or a collapse succeeds), the
offset advances past the region just processed, and the next attempt
starts at the highest order permitted by the new offset's natural
alignment.
The algorithm works as follows:
1) set offset=0 and order=HPAGE_PMD_ORDER
2) if the order is not enabled, go to step (5)
3) count occupied PTEs in the (offset, order) range using
bitmap_weight_from()
4) if the count satisfies the max_ptes_none threshold, attempt
collapse; on success, advance to step (6)
5) if a smaller enabled order exists, decrement order and retry
from step (2) at the same offset
6) advance offset past the current region and compute the next
order from the new offset's natural alignment via __ffs(offset),
capped at HPAGE_PMD_ORDER
7) repeat from step (2) until the full PMD range is covered
mTHP collapses reject regions containing swapped out or shared pages.
This is because adding new entries can lead to new none pages, and these
may lead to constant promotion into a higher order mTHP. A similar
issue can occur with "max_ptes_none > HPAGE_PMD_NR/2" due to a collapse
introducing at least 2x the number of pages, and on a future scan will
satisfy the promotion condition once again. This issue is prevented via
the collapse_max_ptes_none() function which imposes the max_ptes_none
restrictions above.
We currently only support mTHP collapse for max_ptes_none values of 0
and HPAGE_PMD_NR - 1. resulting in the following behavior:
- max_ptes_none=0: Never introduce new empty pages during collapse
- max_ptes_none=HPAGE_PMD_NR-1: Always try collapse to the highest
available mTHP order
Any other max_ptes_none value will emit a warning and default mTHP
collapse to max_ptes_none=0. There should be no behavior change for PMD
collapse.
Once we determine what mTHP sizes fits best in that PMD range a collapse
is attempted. A minimum collapse order of 2 is used as this is the lowest
order supported by anon memory as defined by THP_ORDERS_ALL_ANON.
Currently madv_collapse is not supported and will only attempt PMD
collapse.
We can also remove the check for is_khugepaged inside the PMD scan as
the collapse_max_ptes_none() function handles this logic now.
Signed-off-by: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
---Yeah, overall much simpler and much easier to get. As discussed, we can optimize this later to traverse enabled orders more efficiently.
+ bitmap_zero(cc->mthp_present_ptes, MAX_PTRS_PER_PTE); memset(cc->node_load, 0, sizeof(cc->node_load)); nodes_clear(cc->alloc_nmask); + + enabled_orders = collapse_possible_orders(vma, vma->vm_flags, tva_flags); + + /* + * If PMD is the only enabled order, enforce max_ptes_none, otherwise + * scan all pages to populate the bitmap for mTHP collapse. + */
I think it would have been good to mention where the check is performed for mTHP collapse. Can be added later. Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org> -- Cheers, David