[PATCH v5 0/2] mm: improve large folio readahead for exec memory

[Andrew Morton]

On Fri, 22 May 2026 09:23:46 -0700 Usama Arif <usama.arif at linux.dev> wrote:

> Two checks in do_sync_mmap_readahead() limit large-folio readahead:
> 
>   1. The mmap_miss heuristic is meant to throttle wasteful speculative
>      readahead. It is currently also applied to the VM_EXEC readahead
>      path, which is targeted rather than speculative. Once mmap_miss exceeds
>      MMAP_LOTSAMISS, exec readahead - including the large-folio
>      order requested by exec_folio_order() - is disabled. On
>      configurations where the mmap_miss decrement paths are not
>      active (see patch 1) the counter only grows, so exec readahead
>      is permanently disabled after the first 100 faults.
> 
>   2. The force_thp_readahead path is gated only on
>      HPAGE_PMD_ORDER <= MAX_PAGECACHE_ORDER and always drives the
>      readahead at HPAGE_PMD_ORDER. Configurations where
>      HPAGE_PMD_ORDER exceeds MAX_PAGECACHE_ORDER never reach this
>      path, even when the mapping itself supports usefully large
>      folios well below the cap.
> 
> Both issues are most visible on arm64 with a 64K base page size,
> where HPAGE_PMD_ORDER is 13 (512MB) -- above MAX_PAGECACHE_ORDER
> (11) -- and where fault_around_pages collapses to 1 disabling
> should_fault_around() (one of the two mmap_miss decrement sites).
> However the fixes are architecture-agnostic: patch 1 reflects the
> nature of VM_EXEC readahead regardless of base page size, and
> patch 2 generalises the gate so any mapping advertising a usefully
> large maximum folio order can benefit.
> 
> I created a benchmark that mmaps a large executable file and calls
> RET-stub functions at PAGE_SIZE offsets across it. "Cold" measures
> fault + readahead cost. "Random" first faults in all pages with a
> sequential sweep (not measured), then measures time for calling random
> offsets, isolating iTLB miss cost for scattered execution.
> 
> The benchmark results on Neoverse V2 (Grace), arm64 with 64K base pages,
> 512MB executable file on ext4, averaged over 3 runs:
> 
>   Phase      | Baseline     | Patched      | Improvement
>   -----------|--------------|--------------|------------------
>   Cold fault | 83.4 ms      | 41.3 ms      | 50% faster
>   Random     | 76.0 ms      | 58.3 ms      | 23% faster

Well that's nice.

AI review might have found a few things:
	https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260522162422.3856502-1-usama.arif@linux.dev