Re: [RFC PATCH 1/7] x86, mm: ZONE_DEVICE for "device memory"

From: Dan Williams
Date: Fri Aug 14 2015 - 18:33:38 EST


On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 3:06 PM, Jerome Glisse <j.glisse@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 02:52:15PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 2:37 PM, Jerome Glisse <j.glisse@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 11:50:05PM -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
[..]
>> > What is the rational for not updating max_pfn, max_low_pfn, ... ?
>> >
>>
>> The idea is that this memory is not meant to be available to the page
>> allocator and should not count as new memory capacity. We're only
>> hotplugging it to get struct page coverage.
>
> But this sounds bogus to me to rely on max_pfn to stay smaller than
> first_dev_pfn. For instance you might plug a device that register
> dev memory and then some regular memory might be hotplug, effectively
> updating max_pfn to a value bigger than first_dev_pfn.
>

True.

> Also i do not think that the buddy allocator use max_pfn or max_low_pfn
> to consider page/zone for allocation or not.

Yes, I took it out with no effects. I'll investigate further whether
we should be touching those variables or not for this new usage.
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