Message-ID: <409dc029-ad8a-4f7e-931e-8044b61a0295@kernel.org>
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2026 23:16:48 +0100
From: "David Hildenbrand (Red Hat)" <david@...nel.org>
To: Ankur Arora <ankur.a.arora@...cle.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-mm@...ck.org, x86@...nel.org
Cc: akpm@...ux-foundation.org, bp@...en8.de, dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com,
 hpa@...or.com, mingo@...hat.com, mjguzik@...il.com, luto@...nel.org,
 peterz@...radead.org, tglx@...utronix.de, willy@...radead.org,
 raghavendra.kt@....com, chleroy@...nel.org, ioworker0@...il.com,
 lizhe.67@...edance.com, boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com, konrad.wilk@...cle.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v11 7/8] mm: folio_zero_user: clear page ranges

On 1/7/26 08:20, Ankur Arora wrote:
> Use batch clearing in clear_contig_highpages() instead of clearing a
> single page at a time. Exposing larger ranges enables the processor to
> optimize based on extent.
> 
> To do this we just switch to using clear_user_highpages() which would
> in turn use clear_user_pages() or clear_pages().
> 
> Batched clearing, when running under non-preemptible models, however,
> has latency considerations. In particular, we need periodic invocations
> of cond_resched() to keep to reasonable preemption latencies.
> This is a problem because the clearing primitives do not, or might not
> be able to, call cond_resched() to check if preemption is needed.
> 
> So, limit the worst case preemption latency by doing the clearing in
> units of no more than PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH pages.
> (Preemptible models already define away most of cond_resched(), so the
> batch size is ignored when running under those.)
> 
> PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH: for architectures with "fast"
> clear-pages (ones that define clear_pages()), we define it as 32MB
> worth of pages. This is meant to be large enough to allow the processor
> to optimize the operation and yet small enough that we see reasonable
> preemption latency for when this optimization is not possible
> (ex. slow microarchitectures, memory bandwidth saturation.)
> 
> This specific value also allows for a cacheline allocation elision
> optimization (which might help unrelated applications by not evicting
> potentially useful cache lines) that kicks in recent generations of
> AMD Zen processors at around LLC-size (32MB is a typical size).
> 
> At the same time 32MB is small enough that even with poor clearing
> bandwidth (say ~10GBps), time to clear 32MB should be well below the
> scheduler's default warning threshold (sysctl_resched_latency_warn_ms=100).
> 
> "Slow" architectures (don't have clear_pages()) will continue to use
> the base value (single page).
> 
> Performance
> ==
> 
> Testing a demand fault workload shows a decent improvement in bandwidth
> with pg-sz=1GB. Bandwidth with pg-sz=2MB stays flat.
> 
>   $ perf bench mem mmap -p $pg-sz -f demand -s 64GB -l 5
> 
>                     contiguous-pages       batched-pages
>                     (GBps +- %stdev)      (GBps +- %stdev)
> 
>     pg-sz=2MB       23.58 +- 1.95%        25.34 +- 1.18%       +  7.50%  preempt=*
> 
>     pg-sz=1GB       25.09 +- 0.79%        39.22 +- 2.32%       + 56.31%  preempt=none|voluntary
>     pg-sz=1GB       25.71 +- 0.03%        52.73 +- 0.20% [#]   +110.16%  preempt=full|lazy
> 
>   [#] We perform much better with preempt=full|lazy because, not
>    needing explicit invocations of cond_resched() we can clear the
>    full extent (pg-sz=1GB) as a single unit which the processor
>    can optimize for.
> 
>   (Unless otherwise noted, all numbers are on AMD Genoa (EPYC 9J13);
>    region-size=64GB, local node; 2.56 GHz, boost=0.)
> 
> Analysis
> ==
> 
> pg-sz=1GB: the improvement we see falls in two buckets depending on
> the batch size in use.
> 
> For batch-size=32MB the number of cachelines allocated (L1-dcache-loads)
> -- which stay relatively flat for smaller batches, start to drop off
> because cacheline allocation elision kicks in. And as can be seen below,
> at batch-size=1GB, we stop allocating cachelines almost entirely.
> (Not visible here but from testing with intermediate sizes, the
> allocation change kicks in only at batch-size=32MB and ramps up from
> there.)
> 
>   contigous-pages       6,949,417,798      L1-dcache-loads                  #  883.599 M/sec                       ( +-  0.01% )  (35.75%)
>                         3,226,709,573      L1-dcache-load-misses            #   46.43% of all L1-dcache accesses   ( +-  0.05% )  (35.75%)
> 
>      batched,32MB       2,290,365,772      L1-dcache-loads                  #  471.171 M/sec                       ( +-  0.36% )  (35.72%)
>                         1,144,426,272      L1-dcache-load-misses            #   49.97% of all L1-dcache accesses   ( +-  0.58% )  (35.70%)
> 
>      batched,1GB           63,914,157      L1-dcache-loads                  #   17.464 M/sec                       ( +-  8.08% )  (35.73%)
>                            22,074,367      L1-dcache-load-misses            #   34.54% of all L1-dcache accesses   ( +- 16.70% )  (35.70%)
> 
> The dropoff is also visible in L2 prefetch hits (miss numbers are
> on similar lines):
> 
>   contiguous-pages      3,464,861,312      l2_pf_hit_l2.all                 #  437.722 M/sec                       ( +-  0.74% )  (15.69%)
> 
>     batched,32MB          883,750,087      l2_pf_hit_l2.all                 #  181.223 M/sec                       ( +-  1.18% )  (15.71%)
> 
>      batched,1GB            8,967,943      l2_pf_hit_l2.all                 #    2.450 M/sec                       ( +- 17.92% )  (15.77%)
> 
> This largely decouples the frontend from the backend since the clearing
> operation does not need to wait on loads from memory (we still need
> cacheline ownership but that's a shorter path). This is most visible
> if we rerun the test above with (boost=1, 3.66 GHz).
> 
>   $ perf bench mem mmap -p $pg-sz -f demand -s 64GB -l 5
> 
>                     contiguous-pages       batched-pages
>                     (GBps +- %stdev)      (GBps +- %stdev)
> 
>     pg-sz=2MB       26.08 +- 1.72%        26.13 +- 0.92%           -     preempt=*
> 
>     pg-sz=1GB       26.99 +- 0.62%        48.85 +- 2.19%       + 80.99%  preempt=none|voluntary
>     pg-sz=1GB       27.69 +- 0.18%        75.18 +- 0.25%       +171.50%  preempt=full|lazy
> 
> Comparing the batched-pages numbers from the boost=0 ones and these: for
> a clock-speed gain of 42% we gain 24.5% for batch-size=32MB and 42.5%
> for batch-size=1GB.
> In comparison the baseline contiguous-pages case and both the
> pg-sz=2MB ones are largely backend bound so gain no more than ~10%.
> 
> Other platforms tested, Intel Icelakex (Oracle X9) and ARM64 Neoverse-N1
> (Ampere Altra) both show an improvement of ~35% for pg-sz=2MB|1GB.
> The first goes from around 8GBps to 11GBps and the second from 32GBps
> to 44 GBPs.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Ankur Arora <ankur.a.arora@...cle.com>
> ---
>   include/linux/mm.h | 36 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>   mm/memory.c        | 18 +++++++++++++++---
>   2 files changed, 51 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
> index a4a9a8d1ffec..fb5b86d78093 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mm.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mm.h
> @@ -4204,6 +4204,15 @@ static inline void clear_page_guard(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
>    * mapped to user space.
>    *
>    * Does absolutely no exception handling.
> + *
> + * Note that even though the clearing operation is preemptible, clear_pages()
> + * does not (and on architectures where it reduces to a few long-running
> + * instructions, might not be able to) call cond_resched() to check if
> + * rescheduling is required.
> + *
> + * When running under preemptible models this is not a problem. Under
> + * cooperatively scheduled models, however, the caller is expected to
> + * limit @npages to no more than PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH.
>    */
>   static inline void clear_pages(void *addr, unsigned int npages)
>   {
> @@ -4214,6 +4224,32 @@ static inline void clear_pages(void *addr, unsigned int npages)
>   }
>   #endif
>   
> +#ifndef PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH
> +#ifdef clear_pages
> +/*
> + * The architecture defines clear_pages(), and we assume that it is
> + * generally "fast". So choose a batch size large enough to allow the processor
> + * headroom for optimizing the operation and yet small enough that we see
> + * reasonable preemption latency for when this optimization is not possible
> + * (ex. slow microarchitectures, memory bandwidth saturation.)
> + *
> + * With a value of 32MB and assuming a memory bandwidth of ~10GBps, this should
> + * result in worst case preemption latency of around 3ms when clearing pages.
> + *
> + * (See comment above clear_pages() for why preemption latency is a concern
> + * here.)
> + */
> +#define PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH		(32 << (20 - PAGE_SHIFT))

Nit: Could we use SZ_32G here?

	SZ_32G >> PAGE_SHIFT;

> +#else /* !clear_pages */
> +/*
> + * The architecture does not provide a clear_pages() implementation. Assume
> + * that clear_page() -- which clear_pages() will fallback to -- is relatively
> + * slow and choose a small value for PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH.
> + */
> +#define PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH		1
> +#endif
> +#endif
> +
>   #ifdef __HAVE_ARCH_GATE_AREA
>   extern struct vm_area_struct *get_gate_vma(struct mm_struct *mm);
>   extern int in_gate_area_no_mm(unsigned long addr);
> diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
> index c06e43a8861a..49e7154121f5 100644
> --- a/mm/memory.c
> +++ b/mm/memory.c
> @@ -7240,13 +7240,25 @@ static inline int process_huge_page(
>   static void clear_contig_highpages(struct page *page, unsigned long addr,
>   				   unsigned int nr_pages)
>   {
> -	unsigned int i;
> +	unsigned int i, unit, count;
>   
>   	might_sleep();
> -	for (i = 0; i < nr_pages; i++) {
> +	/*
> +	 * When clearing we want to operate on the largest extent possible since
> +	 * that allows for extent based architecture specific optimizations.
> +	 *
> +	 * However, since the clearing interfaces (clear_user_highpages(),
> +	 * clear_user_pages(), clear_pages()), do not call cond_resched(), we
> +	 * limit the batch size when running under non-preemptible scheduling
> +	 * models.
> +	 */
> +	unit = preempt_model_preemptible() ? nr_pages : PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH;
> +

Nit: you could do above:

const unsigned int unit = preempt_model_preemptible() ? nr_pages : PROCESS_PAGES_NON_PREEMPT_BATCH;

> +	for (i = 0; i < nr_pages; i += count) {
>   		cond_resched();
>   
> -		clear_user_highpage(page + i, addr + i * PAGE_SIZE);
> +		count = min(unit, nr_pages - i);
> +		clear_user_highpages(page + i, addr + i * PAGE_SIZE, count);
>   	}
>   }
>   

Feel free to send a fixup patch inline as reply to this mail for any of these that
Andrew can simply squash. No need to resend just because of that.


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


-- 
Cheers

David

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