[PATCH 11/11] Documentation/mm: update DAX vmemmap deduplication docs
From: Muchun Song <hidden>
Date: 2026-08-31 07:55:19
Also in:
linux-doc, linux-mm, lkml
Subsystem:
documentation, hugetlb subsystem, linux for powerpc (32-bit and 64-bit), memory management - misc, the rest · Maintainers:
Jonathan Corbet, Muchun Song, Oscar Salvador, Madhavan Srinivasan, Andrew Morton, David Hildenbrand, Linus Torvalds
Device DAX now uses the common per-zone shared tail page for vmemmap deduplication. The old documentation still described a DAX-specific layout with a separately populated tail vmemmap page and half the HugeTLB savings. Update the generic and powerpc documentation to describe the shared layout and keep the powerpc-specific size calculations while avoiding duplicate diagrams. Signed-off-by: Muchun Song <redacted> --- Documentation/arch/powerpc/vmemmap_dedup.rst | 90 ++++---------------- Documentation/mm/vmemmap_dedup.rst | 32 +------ 2 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 101 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/arch/powerpc/vmemmap_dedup.rst b/Documentation/arch/powerpc/vmemmap_dedup.rst
index dc4db59fdf87..8286acbca9bc 100644
--- a/Documentation/arch/powerpc/vmemmap_dedup.rst
+++ b/Documentation/arch/powerpc/vmemmap_dedup.rst@@ -19,82 +19,28 @@ With 1G PUD level mapping, we require 16384 struct pages and a single 64K vmemmap page can contain 1024 struct pages (64K/sizeof(struct page)). Hence we require 16 64K pages in vmemmap to map the struct page for 1G PUD level mapping. -Here's how things look like on device-dax after the sections are populated:: - +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+ - | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 1 | -------------> | 1 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 2 | ----------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ - | | +-----------+ | | | | | - | | | 3 | ------------------+ | | | | - | | +-----------+ | | | | - | | | 4 | --------------------+ | | | - | PUD | +-----------+ | | | - | level | | . | ----------------------+ | | - | mapping | +-----------+ | | - | | | . | ------------------------+ | - | | +-----------+ | - | | | 15 | --------------------------+ - | | +-----------+ - | | - | | - | | - +-----------+ - - With 4K page size, 2M PMD level mapping requires 512 struct pages and a single 4K vmemmap page contains 64 struct pages(4K/sizeof(struct page)). Hence we require 8 4K pages in vmemmap to map the struct page for 2M pmd level mapping. -Here's how things look like on device-dax after the sections are populated:: - - +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+ - | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 1 | -------------> | 1 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 2 | ----------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ - | | +-----------+ | | | | | - | | | 3 | ------------------+ | | | | - | | +-----------+ | | | | - | | | 4 | --------------------+ | | | - | PMD | +-----------+ | | | - | level | | 5 | ----------------------+ | | - | mapping | +-----------+ | | - | | | 6 | ------------------------+ | - | | +-----------+ | - | | | 7 | --------------------------+ - | | +-----------+ - | | - | | - | | - +-----------+ - -With 1G PUD level mapping, we require 262144 struct pages and a single 4K -vmemmap page can contain 64 struct pages (4K/sizeof(struct page)). Hence we -require 4096 4K pages in vmemmap to map the struct pages for 1G PUD level -mapping. - -Here's how things look like on device-dax after the sections are populated:: - - +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+ - | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 1 | -------------> | 1 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 2 | ----------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ - | | +-----------+ | | | | | - | | | 3 | ------------------+ | | | | - | | +-----------+ | | | | - | | | 4 | --------------------+ | | | - | PUD | +-----------+ | | | - | level | | . | ----------------------+ | | - | mapping | +-----------+ | | - | | | . | ------------------------+ | - | | +-----------+ | - | | | 4095 | --------------------------+ - | | +-----------+ +Here's how things look on device-dax after vmemmap-optimized sections are +populated. ``N`` is the number of vmemmap pages required by the DAX mapping +above:: + + Device DAX vmemmap pages (N pages) backing page frames + +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-------------+ + | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | + | | +-----------+ +-------------+ + | | | 1 | ------+ + | | +-----------+ | + | | | 2 | ------+ + | | +-----------+ | + | | | . | ------+ +-------------+ + | PMD/PUD | +-----------+ | | A single, | + | level | | . | ------+------> | per-zone | + | mapping | +-----------+ | | shared tail | + | | | N - 1 | ------+ | page | + | | +-----------+ +-------------+ | | | | | |
diff --git a/Documentation/mm/vmemmap_dedup.rst b/Documentation/mm/vmemmap_dedup.rst
index 9fa8642ded48..8c287ae3f86c 100644
--- a/Documentation/mm/vmemmap_dedup.rst
+++ b/Documentation/mm/vmemmap_dedup.rst@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@ - .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 =========================================
@@ -192,32 +191,7 @@ to 4 on HugeTLB pages. There's no remapping of vmemmap given that device-dax memory is not part of System RAM ranges initialized at boot. Thus the tail page deduplication -happens at a later stage when we populate the sections. HugeTLB reuses the -the head vmemmap page representing, whereas device-dax reuses the tail -vmemmap page. This results in only half of the savings compared to HugeTLB. - -Deduplicated tail pages are not mapped read-only. +happens at a later stage when we populate the sections. -Here's how things look like on device-dax after the sections are populated:: - - +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+ mapping to +-----------+ - | | | 0 | -------------> | 0 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 1 | -------------> | 1 | - | | +-----------+ +-----------+ - | | | 2 | ----------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ - | | +-----------+ | | | | | - | | | 3 | ------------------+ | | | | - | | +-----------+ | | | | - | | | 4 | --------------------+ | | | - | PMD | +-----------+ | | | - | level | | 5 | ----------------------+ | | - | mapping | +-----------+ | | - | | | 6 | ------------------------+ | - | | +-----------+ | - | | | 7 | --------------------------+ - | | +-----------+ - | | - | | - | | - +-----------+ +Deduplicated tail pages are not mapped read-only. The mapping layout is the same +as HugeTLB.
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2.54.0