[PATCH] arm64: mm: Prevent the initial page table setup from creating larger blocks

[Jeremy Linton]

On 11/24/2015 11:48 AM, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> While the ARM ARM is not entirely clear, over the years we have assumed
> that we can split a large block entry (pmd/pud) into smaller blocks
> pointing to the same physical address with little risk of a TLB
> conflict. However, remapping a smaller blocks range as a large one (e.g.
> from page to sections or to contiguous pages) implies a high risk of TLB
> conflict. Excessive TLB flushing would make the window smaller but it
> would not remove the issue.

	Is a requirement of this assumption, that the kernel isn't running on a 
VM'ed host with small page mappings? AKA the hypervisor is providing 
smaller page sizes than guest linear mapping?

	Because I can understand the idea that the CPU won't walk PTEs for 
entries it has a larger translation for, but my understanding of how the 
TLB's are fragmented when the host has a smaller page size means that 
its potentially possible to have multiple TLB entries for different 
parts of a single cont/block range....