[PATCH v3 2/2] x86_64/kexec: Use PUD level 1GB page for identity mapping if available
Ingo Molnar
mingo at kernel.org
Thu May 4 23:52:53 PDT 2017
* Xunlei Pang <xlpang at redhat.com> wrote:
> @@ -122,6 +122,10 @@ static int init_pgtable(struct kimage *image, unsigned long start_pgtable)
>
> level4p = (pgd_t *)__va(start_pgtable);
> clear_page(level4p);
> +
> + if (direct_gbpages)
> + info.direct_gbpages = true;
No, this should be keyed off the CPU feature (X86_FEATURE_GBPAGES) automatically,
not set blindly! AFAICS this patch will crash kexec on any CPU that does not
support gbpages.
I only noticed this problem after having fixed/enhanced all the changelogs - so
please pick up the new changelog up from the log below.
Thanks,
Ingo
============================>
Author: Xunlei Pang <xlpang at redhat.com>
x86/mm: Add support for gbpages to kernel_ident_mapping_init()
Kernel identity mappings on x86-64 kernels are created in two
ways: by the early x86 boot code, or by kernel_ident_mapping_init().
Native kernels (which is the dominant usecase) use the former,
but the kexec and the hibernation code uses kernel_ident_mapping_init().
There's a subtle difference between these two ways of how identity
mappings are created, the current kernel_ident_mapping_init() code
creates identity mappings always using 2MB page(PMD level) - while
the native kernel boot path also utilizes gbpages where available.
This difference is suboptimal both for performance and for memory
usage: kernel_ident_mapping_init() needs to allocate pages for the
page tables when creating the new identity mappings.
This patch adds 1GB page(PUD level) support to kernel_ident_mapping_init()
to address these concerns.
The primary advantage would be better TLB coverage/performance,
because we'd utilize 1GB TLBs instead of 2MB ones.
It is also useful for machines with large number of memory to
save paging structure allocations(around 4MB/TB using 2MB page)
when setting identity mappings for all the memory, after using
1GB page it will consume only 8KB/TB.
( Note that this change alone does not activate gbpages in kexec,
we are doing that in a separate patch. )
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