linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] convert parisc to sparsemem (was Re: [PATCH v3] mm: make expand_downwards symmetrical to expand

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Date:	Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:36:29 -0700
From:	Dave Hansen <dave@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
Cc:	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...nel.org>,
	Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.cz>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>, Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
	Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>, Andy Whitcroft <apw@...dowen.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] convert parisc to sparsemem (was Re: [PATCH v3] mm:
 make expand_downwards symmetrical to expand_upwards)

On Sat, 2011-04-23 at 13:34 -0500, James Bottomley wrote: 
> This is the preliminary conversion.  It's very nasty on parisc because
> the memory allocation isn't symmetric anymore: under DISCONTIGMEM, we
> push all memory into bootmem and then let free_all_bootmem() do the
> magic for us;

Urg, that's unfortunate.  I bet we could fairly easily teach the bootmem
allocator to allow a couple of bootmem_data's to hang off of an
individual pgdat.  Put each pmem_ranges in one of those instead of a
pgdat.  That would at least help with the bitmap size explosion and
extra loops.

> now we have to do separate initialisations for ranges
> because SPARSEMEM can't do multi-range boot memory. It's also got the
> horrible hack that I only use the first found range for bootmem.  I'm
> not sure if this is correct (it won't be if the first found range can be
> under about 50MB because we'll run out of bootmem during boot) ... we
> might have to sort the ranges and use the larges, but that will involve
> us in even more hackery around the bootmem reservations code.
> 
> The boot sequence got a few seconds slower because now all of the loops
> over our pfn ranges actually have to skip through the holes (which takes
> time for 64GB).

Which iterations were these, btw?  All of the ones I saw the patch touch
seemed to be running over just a single pmem_range.

> All in all, I've not been very impressed with SPARSEMEM over
> DISCONTIGMEM.  It seems to have a lot of rough edges (necessitating
> exception code) which DISCONTIGMEM just copes with.

We definitely need to look at extending it to cover bootmem-time a bit.
Is that even worth it these days with the no-bootmem bits around?

-- Dave


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