linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH -v6 2/2] arm64, tlbflush: don't TLBI broadcast if page reused in write fault

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Message-ID: <2bb9f0c2-a258-4a57-882e-9629f9cc81e6@kernel.org>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:49:45 +0100
From: "David Hildenbrand (Red Hat)" <david@...nel.org>
To: Huang Ying <ying.huang@...ux.alibaba.com>,
 Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>, Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>, Barry Song <baohua@...nel.org>,
 Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>, Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>,
 Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>, Baolin Wang
 <baolin.wang@...ux.alibaba.com>, Yang Shi <yang@...amperecomputing.com>,
 "Christoph Lameter (Ampere)" <cl@...two.org>, Dev Jain <dev.jain@....com>,
 Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@....com>,
 Kefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@...wei.com>,
 Kevin Brodsky <kevin.brodsky@....com>,
 Yin Fengwei <fengwei_yin@...ux.alibaba.com>,
 linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH -v6 2/2] arm64, tlbflush: don't TLBI broadcast if page
 reused in write fault

On 14.11.25 09:54, Huang Ying wrote:
> A multi-thread customer workload with large memory footprint uses
> fork()/exec() to run some external programs every tens seconds.  When
> running the workload on an arm64 server machine, it's observed that
> quite some CPU cycles are spent in the TLB flushing functions.  While
> running the workload on the x86_64 server machine, it's not.  This
> causes the performance on arm64 to be much worse than that on x86_64.
> 
> During the workload running, after fork()/exec() write-protects all
> pages in the parent process, memory writing in the parent process
> will cause a write protection fault.  Then the page fault handler
> will make the PTE/PDE writable if the page can be reused, which is
> almost always true in the workload.  On arm64, to avoid the write
> protection fault on other CPUs, the page fault handler flushes the TLB
> globally with TLBI broadcast after changing the PTE/PDE.  However, this
> isn't always necessary.  Firstly, it's safe to leave some stale
> read-only TLB entries as long as they will be flushed finally.
> Secondly, it's quite possible that the original read-only PTE/PDEs
> aren't cached in remote TLB at all if the memory footprint is large.
> In fact, on x86_64, the page fault handler doesn't flush the remote
> TLB in this situation, which benefits the performance a lot.
> 
> To improve the performance on arm64, make the write protection fault
> handler flush the TLB locally instead of globally via TLBI broadcast
> after making the PTE/PDE writable.  If there are stale read-only TLB
> entries in the remote CPUs, the page fault handler on these CPUs will
> regard the page fault as spurious and flush the stale TLB entries.
> 
> To test the patchset, make the usemem.c from
> vm-scalability (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wfg/vm-scalability.git).
> support calling fork()/exec() periodically.  To mimic the behavior of
> the customer workload, run usemem with 4 threads, access 100GB memory,
> and call fork()/exec() every 40 seconds.  Test results show that with
> the patchset the score of usemem improves ~40.6%.  The cycles% of TLB
> flush functions reduces from ~50.5% to ~0.3% in perf profile.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Huang Ying <ying.huang@...ux.alibaba.com>
> Reviewed-by: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>
> Reviewed-by: Barry Song <baohua@...nel.org>
> Acked-by: Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>
> Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>
> Cc: Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
> Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
> Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>
> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>
> Cc: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@...ux.alibaba.com>
> Cc: Yang Shi <yang@...amperecomputing.com>
> Cc: "Christoph Lameter (Ampere)" <cl@...two.org>
> Cc: Dev Jain <dev.jain@....com>
> Cc: Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@....com>
> Cc: Kefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@...wei.com>
> Cc: Kevin Brodsky <kevin.brodsky@....com>
> Cc: Yin Fengwei <fengwei_yin@...ux.alibaba.com>
> Cc: linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org
> Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
> Cc: linux-mm@...ck.org
> ---

(no need to resend just for acks/rbs, maintainers can pick that up)

Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) <david@...nel.org>

-- 
Cheers

David