linux-kernel - Re: [rfc][patch 0/3] bootmem2: a memory block-oriented boot time allocator

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Date:	Mon, 5 May 2008 11:04:43 -0500
From:	Robin Holt <holt@....com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Johannes Weiner <hannes@...urebad.de>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	Yinghai Lu <yhlu.kernel@...il.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Yasunori Goto <y-goto@...fujitsu.com>
Subject: Re: [rfc][patch 0/3] bootmem2: a memory block-oriented boot time
	allocator

On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 08:23:34AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 5 May 2008, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > 
> > here is a bootmem allocator replacement that uses one bitmap for all
> > available pages and works with a model of contiguous memory blocks
> > that reside on nodes instead of nodes only as the current allocator
> > does.
> 
> Won't this have problems with huge non-contiguous areas?
> 
> Some setups have traditionally had node memory separated in physical space 
> by the high bits of the memory address, and using a single bitmap for such 
> things would potentially be basically impossible - even with a single bit 
> per page, the "span" of possible pages is potentially just too high, even 
> if the nodes themselves don't have tons of memory, because the memory is 
> just very spread out - and allocating the initial bitmap may not work 
> reliably.
> 
> Now, admittedly I don't know if we even support that kind of thing or if 
> people really do things that way any more, so maybe it's not an issue.

SGI sn2 architecture does.  Each DIMM bank is allocated a 16GB range
of physical addresses.  There are up to four banks per node.  The node
number is stuck into higher portions of the address, giving a gap between
nodes of 256GB.  With a potential of 1024 nodes, you would have a very
large array.

Additionally on our upcoming UV systems, there will potentially be a
hole between the bulk of memory and a small amount addressable at the
high end of the address range (slightly short of 16TB) with the typical
gap being on the order of 15TB.

Thanks,
Robin Holt
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