Re: [PATCH -v2 1/2] mm, swap: Use kvzalloc to allocate some swap data structure

From	"Huang\, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>
Newsgroups	linux.kernel
Subject	Re: [PATCH -v2 1/2] mm, swap: Use kvzalloc to allocate some swap data structure
Date	2017-04-01 06:50 +0200
Message-ID	<trj97-6e8-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	(5 earlier) <torcR-5YR-9@gated-at.bofh.it> <torFU-6sZ-19@gated-at.bofh.it> <torZg-6BK-29@gated-at.bofh.it> <toxV0-2ms-3@gated-at.bofh.it> <tqLh8-GX-27@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

Show all headers | View raw

Hi, Michal,

Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> writes:

> On Fri 24-03-17 06:56:10, Dave Hansen wrote:
>> On 03/24/2017 12:33 AM, John Hubbard wrote:
>> > There might be some additional information you are using to come up with
>> > that conclusion, that is not obvious to me. Any thoughts there? These
>> > calls use the same underlying page allocator (and I thought that both
>> > were subject to the same constraints on defragmentation, as a result of
>> > that). So I am not seeing any way that kmalloc could possibly be a
>> > less-fragmenting call than vmalloc.
>> 
>> You guys are having quite a discussion over a very small point.
>> 
>> But, Ying is right.
>> 
>> Let's say we have a two-page data structure.  vmalloc() takes two
>> effectively random order-0 pages, probably from two different 2M pages
>> and pins them.  That "kills" two 2M pages.
>> 
>> kmalloc(), allocating two *contiguous* pages, is very unlikely to cross
>> a 2M boundary (it theoretically could).  That means it will only "kill"
>> the possibility of a single 2M page.  More 2M pages == less fragmentation.
>
> Yes I agree with this. And the patch is no brainer. kvmalloc makes sure
> to not try too hard on the kmalloc side so I really didn't get the
> objection about direct compaction and reclaim which initially started
> this discussion. Besides that the swapon path usually happens early
> during the boot where we should have those larger blocks available.

Could I add your Acked-by for this patch?

Best Regards,
Huang, Ying

Thread

Re: [PATCH -v2 1/2] mm, swap: Use kvzalloc to allocate some swap  data structure Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> - 2017-03-30 18:40 +0200
  Re: [PATCH -v2 1/2] mm, swap: Use kvzalloc to allocate some swap data structure "Huang\, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com> - 2017-04-01 06:50 +0200
    Re: [PATCH -v2 1/2] mm, swap: Use kvzalloc to allocate some swap  data structure Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> - 2017-04-03 10:20 +0200
      Re: [PATCH -v2 1/2] mm, swap: Use kvzalloc to allocate some swap data structure "Huang\, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com> - 2017-04-05 02:50 +0200

csiph-web