Re: [PATCH v4 1/7] mm/zone_device: Add order argument to folio_free callback

On 1/12/26 08:35, Matthew Wilcox wrote:

On Sun, Jan 11, 2026 at 09:55:40PM +0100, Francois Dugast wrote:

quoted

The core MM splits the folio before calling folio_free, restoring the
zone pages associated with the folio to an initialized state (e.g.,
non-compound, pgmap valid, etc...). The order argument represents the
folio’s order prior to the split which can be used driver side to know
how many pages are being freed.

This really feels like the wrong way to fix this problem.

This stems from a special requirement, freeing is done in two phases

1. Free the folio -> inform the driver (which implies freeing the backing device memory)
2. Return the folio back, split it back to single order folios

The current code does not do 2. 1 followed by 2 does not work for
Francois since the backing memory can get reused before we reach step 2.
The proposed patch does 2 followed 1, but doing 2 means we've lost the 
folio order and thus the old order is passed in. Although, I wonder if the
backing folio's zone_device_data can be used to encode any order information
about the device side allocation.

@Francois, I hope I did not miss anything in the explanation above.

I think someone from the graphics side really needs to take the lead on
understanding what the MM is doing (both currently and in the future).
I'm happy to work with you, but it feels like there's a lot of churn right
now because there's a lot of people working on this without understanding
the MM side of things (and conversely, I don't think (m)any people on the
MM side really understand what graphics cards are trying to accomplish).

I suspect you are referring to folio specialization and/or downsizing?

Who is that going to be?  I'm happy to get on the phone with someone.

Happy to work with you, but I am not the authority on graphics, I can speak
to zone device folios. I suspect we'd need to speak to more than one person.

Balbir