Re: [RFC PATCH] mm/sparse: remove sparse_buffer

[Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>]

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 02:29:38PM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> On 4/9/26 13:40, Muchun Song wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >> On Apr 8, 2026, at 21:40, David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 4/7/26 10:39, Muchun Song wrote:
> >>> The sparse_buffer was originally introduced in commit 9bdac9142407
> >>> ("sparsemem: Put mem map for one node together.") to allocate a
> >>> contiguous block of memory for all memmaps of a NUMA node.
> >>>
> >>> However, the original commit message did not clearly state the actual
> >>> benefits or the necessity of keeping all memmap areas strictly
> >>> contiguous for a given node.
> >>
> >> We don't want the memmap to be scattered around, given that it is one of
> >> the biggest allocations during boot.
> >>
> >> It's related to not turning too many memory blocks/sections
> >> un-offlinable I think.
> >>
> >> I always imagined that memblock would still keep these allocations close
> >> to each other. Can you verify if that is indeed true?
> > 
> > You raised a very interesting point about whether memblock keeps
> > these allocations close to each other. I've done a thorough test
> > on a 16GB VM by printing the actual physical allocations.

memblock always allocates in order, so if there are no other memblock
allocations between the calls to memmap_alloc(), all these allocations will
be together and they all will be coalesced to a single region in
memblock.reserved.

> > I enabled the existing debug logs in arch/x86/mm/init_64.c to
> > trace the vmemmap_set_pmd allocations. Here is what really happens:
> > 
> > When using vmemmap_alloc_block without sparse_buffer, the
> > memblock allocator allocates 2MB chunks. Because memblock
> > allocates top-down by default, the physical allocations look
> > like this:
> > 
> > [ffe6475cc0000000-ffe6475cc01fffff] PMD -> [ff3cb082bfc00000-ff3cb082bfdfffff] on node 0
> > [ffe6475cc0200000-ffe6475cc03fffff] PMD -> [ff3cb082bfa00000-ff3cb082bfbfffff] on node 0
> > [ffe6475cc0400000-ffe6475cc05fffff] PMD -> [ff3cb082bf800000-ff3cb082bf9fffff] on node 0

...

> > Notice that the physical chunks are strictly adjacent to each
> > other, but in descending order!
> > 
> > So, they are NOT "scattered around" the whole node randomly.
> > Instead, they are packed densely back-to-back in a single
> > contiguous physical range (just mapped top-down in 2MB pieces).
> > 
> > Because they are packed tightly together within the same
> > contiguous physical memory range, they will at most consume or
> > pollute the exact same number of memory blocks as a single
> > contiguous allocation (like sparse_buffer did). Therefore, this
> > will NOT turn additional memory blocks/sections into an
> > "un-offlinable" state.
> > 
> > It seems we can safely remove the sparse buffer preallocation
> > mechanism, don't you think?
> 
> Yes, what I suspected. Is there a performance implication when doing
> many individual memmap_alloc(), for example, on a larger system with
> many sections?

memmap_alloc() will be slower than sparse_buffer_alloc(), allocating from
memblock is more involved that sparse_buffer_alloc(), but without
measurements it's hard to tell how much it'll affect overall sparse_init().
  
> -- 
> Cheers,
> 
> David

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Mike.