Re: [PATCH HOTFIX 6.17] mm/mremap: avoid expensive folio lookup on mremap folio pte batch

[David Hildenbrand]

> Not sure if some sleep has changed your mind on what "hint" means? I'm pretty
> sure David named this function, but for me the name makes sense. The arch is
> saying "I know that the pte batch is at least N ptes. It's up to you if you use
> that information. I'll still work correctly if you ignore it".

The last one is the important bit I think.

> For me, your interpretation of 'the most number of PTEs that _might_ coalesce'
> would be a guess, not a hint.

I'm not a native speaker, so I'll let both of you figure that out. To me 
it makes sense as well ... but well, I was involved when creating that 
function. :)

> > I understand the con PTE bit is a 'hint' but as I recall you saying at
> > LSF/MM 'modern CPUs take the hint'. Which presumably is where this comes
> > from, but that's kinda deceptive.
> >
> > Anyway the reason I was emphatic here is on the basis that I believe I had
> > this explained to met his way, which obviously I or whoever it was (don't
> > recall) must have misunderstood. Or perhaps I hallucinated it... :)
>
> FWIW, this is the documentation for the function:
>
> /**
>   * pte_batch_hint - Number of pages that can be added to batch without scanning.
>   * @ptep: Page table pointer for the entry.
>   * @pte: Page table entry.
>   *
>   * Some architectures know that a set of contiguous ptes all map the same
>   * contiguous memory with the same permissions. In this case, it can provide a
>   * hint to aid pte batching without the core code needing to scan every pte.
>   *
>   * An architecture implementation may ignore the PTE accessed state. Further,
>   * the dirty state must apply atomically to all the PTEs described by the hint.
>   *
>   * May be overridden by the architecture, else pte_batch_hint is always 1.
>   */

It's actually ... surprisingly good after reading it again after at 
least a year.

> > I see that folio_pte_batch() can get _more_, is this on the basis of there
> > being adjacent, physically contiguous contPTE entries that can also be
> > batched up?

[...]

> > > > > Not sure if that was discussed at some point before we went into the
> > > > > direction of using folios. But there really doesn't seem to be anything
> > > > > gained for other architectures here (as raised by Jann).
> > > >
> > > > Yup... I wonder about the other instances of this... ruh roh.
> > >
> > > IIRC prior to Dev's mprotect and mremap optimizations, I believe all sites
> > > already needed the folio. I haven't actually looked at how mprotect ended up,
> > > but maybe worth checking to see if it should protect with pte_batch_hint() too.
> >
> > mprotect didn't? I mean let's check.
>
> I think for mprotect, the folio was only previously needed for the numa case. I
> have a vague memory that either Dev of I proposed wrapping folio_pte_batch() to
> only get the folio and call it if the next PTE had an adjacent PFN (or something
> like that). But it was deemed to complex. I might be misremembering... could
> have been an internal conversation. I'll chat with Dev about it and revisit.

I am probably to blame here, because I think I rejected early to have 
arm64-only optimization, assuming other arch could benefit here as well 
with batching. But as it seems, batching in mremap() code really only 
serves the cont-pte managing code, and the folio_pte_batch() is really 
entirely unnecessary.

In case of mprotect(), I think really only (a) NUMA and (b) anon-folio 
write-upgrade required the folio. So it's a bit more tricky than 
mremap() here where ... the folio is entirely irrelevant.

One could detect the "anon write-upgrade possible" case early as well, 
and only lookup the folio in that case, otherwise use the straight pte hint.

So I think there is some room for further improvement.

--
Cheers,

David / dhildenb