答复: 答复: [PATCH] arm64: mm: free unused memmap for sparse memory model that define VMEMMAP

[Catalin Marinas]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 01:40:34PM +0000, liwei (CM) wrote:
> Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 08:41:17AM +0000, liwei (CM) wrote:
> > > Mike Rapoport wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 03:32:03PM +0800, Wei Li wrote:
> > > > > For the memory hole, sparse memory model that define 
> > > > > SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP do not free the reserved memory for the page
> > > > > map, this patch do it.
> > > > 
> > > > Are there numbers showing how much memory is actually freed?
> > > > 
> > > > The freeing of empty memmap would become rather complex with these 
> > > > changes, do the memory savings justify it?
> > > 
> > > In the sparse memory model, the size of a section is 1 GB 
> > > (SECTION_SIZE_BITS 30) by default.
> > 
> > Can we reduce SECTION_SIZE_BITS instead? Say 26?
> 
> Yes, you are right, reduce SECTION_SIZE_BITS to 26 can save almost the
> same memory as the patch. 
> 
> 1) However, it is not clear whether changing the section size has any
> other impact.

Well, we should analyse this.

> 2) Just like the flat memory model and the sparse memory model that
> does not define VMEMMAP, both of them have their own ways to free
> unused memmap. I think we've given a similar way for sparse memory
> define VMEMMAP.

I think we did it for flatmem initially (on arm32) and added support for
sparsemem later on, so free_unused_memmap() had to cope with sparse
sections. On arm64 we introduced vmemmap support and didn't bother with
the freeing at all because of the added complexity of the vmemmap page
tables.

I wonder whether we should just disallow flatmem and non-vmemmap
sparsemem on arm64. Is there any value in keeping them around?

> 3) This explicit free unused memmap method does reduce unnecessary
> memory waste for users who do not notice the section size
> modification.

But if we changed SECTION_SIZE_BITS in the mainline kernel, then we
wouldn't need additional code to free the unused memmap.

-- 
Catalin