[PATCH] mm: Add ARCH_FORCE_PAGE_BLOCK_ORDER to select page block order

[Juan Yescas]

On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 7:24 AM Zi Yan <ziy at nvidia.com> wrote:
>
> On 1 May 2025, at 1:25, Juan Yescas wrote:
>
> > Problem: On large page size configurations (16KiB, 64KiB), the CMA
> > alignment requirement (CMA_MIN_ALIGNMENT_BYTES) increases considerably,
> > and this causes the CMA reservations to be larger than necessary.
> > This means that system will have less available MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE and
> > MIGRATE_RECLAIMABLE page blocks since MIGRATE_CMA can't fallback to them.
> >
> > The CMA_MIN_ALIGNMENT_BYTES increases because it depends on
> > MAX_PAGE_ORDER which depends on ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER. The value of
> > ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER increases on 16k and 64k kernels.
> >
> > For example, the CMA alignment requirement when:
> >
> > - CONFIG_ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER default value is used
> > - CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE is set:
> >
> > PAGE_SIZE | MAX_PAGE_ORDER | pageblock_order | CMA_MIN_ALIGNMENT_BYTES
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >    4KiB   |      10        |      10         |  4KiB * (2 ^ 10)  =  4MiB
> >   16Kib   |      11        |      11         | 16KiB * (2 ^ 11) =  32MiB
> >   64KiB   |      13        |      13         | 64KiB * (2 ^ 13) = 512MiB
> >
> > There are some extreme cases for the CMA alignment requirement when:
> >
> > - CONFIG_ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER maximum value is set
> > - CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE is NOT set:
> > - CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE is NOT set
> >
> > PAGE_SIZE | MAX_PAGE_ORDER | pageblock_order |  CMA_MIN_ALIGNMENT_BYTES
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >    4KiB   |      15        |      15         |  4KiB * (2 ^ 15) = 128MiB
> >   16Kib   |      13        |      13         | 16KiB * (2 ^ 13) = 128MiB
> >   64KiB   |      13        |      13         | 64KiB * (2 ^ 13) = 512MiB
> >
> > This affects the CMA reservations for the drivers. If a driver in a
> > 4KiB kernel needs 4MiB of CMA memory, in a 16KiB kernel, the minimal
> > reservation has to be 32MiB due to the alignment requirements:
> >
> > reserved-memory {
> >     ...
> >     cma_test_reserve: cma_test_reserve {
> >         compatible = "shared-dma-pool";
> >         size = <0x0 0x400000>; /* 4 MiB */
> >         ...
> >     };
> > };
> >
> > reserved-memory {
> >     ...
> >     cma_test_reserve: cma_test_reserve {
> >         compatible = "shared-dma-pool";
> >         size = <0x0 0x2000000>; /* 32 MiB */
> >         ...
> >     };
> > };
> >
> > Solution: Add a new config ARCH_FORCE_PAGE_BLOCK_ORDER that
> > allows to set the page block order. The maximum page block
> > order will be given by ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER.
>
> Why not use a boot time parameter to change page block order?

That is a good option. The main tradeoff is:

- The bootloader would have to be updated on the devices to pass the right
pageblock_order value depending on the kernel page size. Currently,
We can boot 4k/16k kernels without any change in the bootloader.

> Otherwise, you will need to maintain an additional kernel
> binary for your use case.
>

Unfortunately, we still need 2 kernel binaries, one for 4k and another for 16k.
There are several data structures that are aligned at compile time based on the
PAGE_SIZE (__aligned(PAGE_SIZE)) that makes it difficult to have only one
binary.

For example:

static u8 idmap_ptes[IDMAP_LEVELS - 1][PAGE_SIZE] __aligned(PAGE_SIZE)
__ro_after_init,
 kpti_ptes[IDMAP_LEVELS - 1][PAGE_SIZE] __aligned(PAGE_SIZE) __ro_after_init;

https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.14.4/source/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c#L780

Thanks
Juan

> --
> Best Regards,
> Yan, Zi