Re: [RFC PATCH v3 0/8] mm,numa: N_PRIVATE node isolation for device-managed memory

[Yury Norov <ynorov@nvidia.com>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 09:36:49AM -0500, Gregory Price wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 10:12:23PM +1100, Balbir Singh wrote:
> > On 1/9/26 06:37, Gregory Price wrote:
> > > This series introduces N_PRIVATE, a new node state for memory nodes 
> > > whose memory is not intended for general system consumption.  Today,
> > > device drivers (CXL, accelerators, etc.) hotplug their memory to access
> > > mm/ services like page allocation and reclaim, but this exposes general
> > > workloads to memory with different characteristics and reliability
> > > guarantees than system RAM.
> > > 
> > > N_PRIVATE provides isolation by default while enabling explicit access
> > > via __GFP_THISNODE for subsystems that understand how to manage these
> > > specialized memory regions.
> > > 
> > 
> > I assume each class of N_PRIVATE is a separate set of NUMA nodes, these
> > could be real or virtual memory nodes?
> >
> 
> This has the the topic of a long, long discussion on the CXL discord -
> how do we get extra nodes if we intend to make HPA space flexibly
> configurable by "intended use".
> 
> tl;dr:  open to discussion.  As of right now, there's no way (that I
> know of) to allocate additional NUMA nodes at boot without having some
> indication that one is needed in the ACPI table (srat touches a PXM, or
> CEDT defines a region not present in SRAT).
> 
> Best idea we have right now is to have a build config that reserves some
> extra nodes which can be used later (they're in N_POSSIBLE but otherwise
> not used by anything).
> 
> > > Design
> > > ======
> > > 
> > > The series introduces:
> > > 
> > >   1. N_PRIVATE node state (mutually exclusive with N_MEMORY)
> > 
> > We should call it N_PRIVATE_MEMORY
> >
> 
> Dan Williams convinced me to go with N_PRIVATE, but this is really a
> bikeshed topic

No it's not. To me (OK, an almost random reader in this discussion),
N_PRIVATE is a pretty confusing name. It doesn't answer the question:
private what? N_PRIVATE_MEMORY is better in that department, isn't?

But taking into account isolcpus, maybe N_ISOLMEM?

> - we could call it N_BOBERT until we find consensus.

Please give it the right name well describing the scope and purpose of
the new restriction policy before moving forward.
 
> > >   enum private_memtype {
> > >       NODE_MEM_NOTYPE,      /* No type assigned (invalid state) */
> > >       NODE_MEM_ZSWAP,       /* Swap compression target */
> > >       NODE_MEM_COMPRESSED,  /* General compressed RAM */
> > >       NODE_MEM_ACCELERATOR, /* Accelerator-attached memory */
> > >       NODE_MEM_DEMOTE_ONLY, /* Memory-tier demotion target only */
> > >       NODE_MAX_MEMTYPE,
> > >   };
> > > 
> > > These types serve as policy hints for subsystems:
> > > 
> > 
> > Do these nodes have fallback(s)? Are these nodes prone to OOM when memory is exhausted
> > in one class of N_PRIVATE node(s)?
> > 
> 
> Right now, these nodes do not have fallbacks, and even if they did the
> use of __GFP_THISNODE would prevent this.  That's intended.
> 
> In theory you could have nodes of similar types fall back to each other,
> but that feels like increased complexity for questionable value.  The
> service requested __GFP_THISNODE should be aware that it needs to manage
> fallback.

Yeah, and most GFP_THISNODE users also pass GFP_NOWARN, which makes it
looking more like an emergency feature. Maybe add a symmetric GFP_PRIVATE
flag that would allow for more flexibility, and highlight the intention
better?

> > What about page cache allocation form these nodes? Since default allocations
> > never use them, a file system would need to do additional work to allocate
> > on them, if there was ever a desire to use them. 
> 
> Yes, in-fact that is the intent.  Anything requesting memory from these
> nodes would need to be aware of how to manage them.
> 
> Similar to ZONE_DEVICE memory - which is wholly unmanaged by the page

This is quite opposite to what you are saying in the motivation
section:

  Several emerging memory technologies require kernel memory management
  services but should not be used for general allocations

So, is it completely unmanaged node, or only general allocation isolated?

Thanks,
Yury

> allocator.  There's potential for re-using some of the ZONE_DEVICE or
> HMM callback infrastructure to implement the callbacks for N_PRIVATE
> instead of re-inventing it.
> 
> > Would memory
> > migration would work between N_PRIVATE and N_MEMORY using move_pages()?
> > 
> 
> N_PRIVATE -> N_MEMORY would probably be easy and trivial, but could also
> be a controllable bit.
> 
> A side-discussion not present in these notes has been whether memtype
> should be an enum or a bitfield.
> 
> N_MEMORY -> N_PRIVATE via migrate.c would probably require some changes
> to migration_target_control and the alloc callback (in vmscan.c, see
> alloc_migrate_folio) would need to be N_PRIVATE aware.
> 
> 
> Thanks for taking a look,
> ~Gregory