linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] mm: remove superfluous _

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Message-ID: <20200819233916.GA2021304@google.com>
Date:   Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:39:16 -0600
From:   Yu Zhao <yuzhao@...gle.com>
To:     Yang Shi <shy828301@...il.com>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...ux.intel.com>,
        Huang Ying <ying.huang@...el.com>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>,
        Yang Shi <yang.shi@...ux.alibaba.com>, Qian Cai <cai@....pw>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
        Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
        Jérôme Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>, Linux MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] mm: remove superfluous __ClearPageWaiters()

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 04:06:32PM -0700, Yang Shi wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 11:47 AM Yu Zhao <yuzhao@...gle.com> wrote:
> >
> > Presumably __ClearPageWaiters() was added to follow the previously
> > removed __ClearPageActive() pattern.
> >
> > Only flags that are in PAGE_FLAGS_CHECK_AT_FREE needs to be properly
> > cleared because otherwise we think there may be some kind of leak.
> > PG_waiters is not one of those flags and leaving the clearing to
> > PAGE_FLAGS_CHECK_AT_PREP is more appropriate.
> 
> Actually TBH I'm not very keen to this change, it seems the clearing
> is just moved around and the allocation side pays for that instead of
> free side.

I'll assume you are referring to the overhead from clearing
PG_waiters. First of all, there is no overhead -- we should have a
serious talk with the hardware team who makes word-size bitwise AND
more than one instruction. And the clearing is done in
free_pages_prepare(), which has nothing to do with allocations.