Re: [PATCH v7 00/16] mm: folio_zero_user: clear contiguous pages

[Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 08:24:02AM -0700, Ankur Arora wrote:
> This series adds clearing of contiguous page ranges for hugepages,
> improving on the current page-at-a-time approach in two ways:
> 
>  - amortizes the per-page setup cost over a larger extent
> 
>  - when using string instructions, exposes the real region size
>    to the processor.
> 
> A processor could use a knowledge of the extent to optimize the
> clearing. AMD Zen uarchs, as an example, elide allocation of
> cachelines for regions larger than L3-size.
> 
> Demand faulting a 64GB region shows performance improvements:
> 
>  $ perf bench mem map -p $pg-sz -f demand -s 64GB -l 5
> 
>                  mm/folio_zero_user    x86/folio_zero_user       change
>                   (GB/s  +- %stdev)     (GB/s  +- %stdev)
> 
>    pg-sz=2MB       11.82  +- 0.67%        16.48  +-  0.30%       + 39.4%	preempt=*
> 
>    pg-sz=1GB       17.14  +- 1.39%        17.42  +-  0.98% [#]   +  1.6%	preempt=none|voluntary
>    pg-sz=1GB       17.51  +- 1.19%        43.23  +-  5.22%       +146.8%	preempt=full|lazy
> 
> [#] Milan uses a threshold of LLC-size (~32MB) for eliding cacheline
> allocation, which is higher than the maximum extent used on x86
> (ARCH_CONTIG_PAGE_NR=8MB), so preempt=none|voluntary sees no improvement
> with pg-sz=1GB.

I'm picking up the tools/perf part for perf-tools-next (v6.18), already
almost 100% reviewed by Namhyung.

Thanks,

- Arnaldo
 
> Raghavendra also tested v3/v4 on AMD Genoa and sees similar improvements [1].
> 
> Changelog:
> 
> v7:
>  - interface cleanups, comments for clear_user_highpages(), clear_user_pages(),
>    clear_pages().
>  - fixed build errors flagged by kernel test robot
>  - move all x86 patches to the tail end
> 
> v6:
>  - perf bench mem: update man pages and other cleanups (Namhyung Kim)
>  - unify folio_zero_user() for HIGHMEM, !HIGHMEM options instead of
>    working through a new config option (David Hildenbrand).
>    - cleanups and simlification around that.
>  (https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250902080816.3715913-1-ankur.a.arora@oracle.com/)
> 
> v5:
>  - move the non HIGHMEM implementation of folio_zero_user() from x86
>    to common code (Dave Hansen)
>  - Minor naming cleanups, commit messages etc
>  (https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250710005926.1159009-1-ankur.a.arora@oracle.com/)
> 
> v4:
>  - adds perf bench workloads to exercise mmap() populate/demand-fault (Ingo)
>  - inline stosb etc (PeterZ)
>  - handle cooperative preemption models (Ingo)
>  - interface and other cleanups all over (Ingo)
>  (https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250616052223.723982-1-ankur.a.arora@oracle.com/)
> 
> v3:
>  - get rid of preemption dependency (TIF_ALLOW_RESCHED); this version
>    was limited to preempt=full|lazy.
>  - override folio_zero_user() (Linus)
>  (https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250414034607.762653-1-ankur.a.arora@oracle.com/)
> 
> v2:
>  - addressed review comments from peterz, tglx.
>  - Removed clear_user_pages(), and CONFIG_X86_32:clear_pages()
>  - General code cleanup
>  (https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230830184958.2333078-1-ankur.a.arora@oracle.com/)
> 
> Comments appreciated!
> 
> Also at:
>   github.com/terminus/linux clear-pages.v7
> 
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/fffd4dad-2cb9-4bc9-8a80-a70be687fd54@amd.com/
> 
> Ankur Arora (16):
>   perf bench mem: Remove repetition around time measurement
>   perf bench mem: Defer type munging of size to float
>   perf bench mem: Move mem op parameters into a structure
>   perf bench mem: Pull out init/fini logic
>   perf bench mem: Switch from zalloc() to mmap()
>   perf bench mem: Allow mapping of hugepages
>   perf bench mem: Allow chunking on a memory region
>   perf bench mem: Refactor mem_options
>   perf bench mem: Add mmap() workloads
>   mm: define clear_pages(), clear_user_pages()
>   mm/highmem: introduce clear_user_highpages()
>   arm: mm: define clear_user_highpages()
>   mm: memory: support clearing page ranges
>   x86/mm: Simplify clear_page_*
>   x86/clear_page: Introduce clear_pages()
>   x86/clear_pages: Support clearing of page-extents
> 
>  arch/arm/include/asm/page.h                  |   7 +
>  arch/x86/include/asm/page_32.h               |   6 +
>  arch/x86/include/asm/page_64.h               |  72 +++-
>  arch/x86/lib/clear_page_64.S                 |  39 +-
>  include/linux/highmem.h                      |  18 +
>  include/linux/mm.h                           |  44 +++
>  mm/memory.c                                  |  82 +++-
>  tools/perf/Documentation/perf-bench.txt      |  58 ++-
>  tools/perf/bench/bench.h                     |   1 +
>  tools/perf/bench/mem-functions.c             | 390 ++++++++++++++-----
>  tools/perf/bench/mem-memcpy-arch.h           |   2 +-
>  tools/perf/bench/mem-memcpy-x86-64-asm-def.h |   4 +
>  tools/perf/bench/mem-memset-arch.h           |   2 +-
>  tools/perf/bench/mem-memset-x86-64-asm-def.h |   4 +
>  tools/perf/builtin-bench.c                   |   1 +
>  15 files changed, 560 insertions(+), 170 deletions(-)
> 
> -- 
> 2.43.5