mm: prohibit the last subpage from reusing the entire large folio
authorBarry Song <v-songbaohua@oppo.com>
Fri, 8 Mar 2024 09:27:21 +0000 (22:27 +1300)
committerAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Wed, 13 Mar 2024 19:12:21 +0000 (12:12 -0700)
commitcd197c3a2040100fd8668b33e72b07d4790b39d7
treedb17530befb68566decf3465d23cf9df0f34f1fb
parentc087a5c324e5577f2d5abee5627c9264c2001ed9
mm: prohibit the last subpage from reusing the entire large folio

In a Copy-on-Write (CoW) scenario, the last subpage will reuse the entire
large folio, resulting in the waste of (nr_pages - 1) pages.  This wasted
memory remains allocated until it is either unmapped or memory reclamation
occurs.

The following small program can serve as evidence of this behavior

 main()
 {
 #define SIZE 1024 * 1024 * 1024UL
         void *p = malloc(SIZE);
         memset(p, 0x11, SIZE);
         if (fork() == 0)
                 _exit(0);
         memset(p, 0x12, SIZE);
         printf("done\n");
         while(1);
 }

For example, using a 1024KiB mTHP by:
 echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-1024kB/enabled

(1) w/o the patch, it takes 2GiB,

Before running the test program,
 / # free -m
                total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754          84        5692           0          17        5669
 Swap:              0           0           0

 / # /a.out &
 / # done

After running the test program,
 / # free -m
                 total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754        2149        3627           0          19        3605
 Swap:              0           0           0

(2) w/ the patch, it takes 1GiB only,

Before running the test program,
 / # free -m
                 total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754          89        5687           0          17        5664
 Swap:              0           0           0

 / # /a.out &
 / # done

After running the test program,
 / # free -m
                total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754        1122        4655           0          17        4632
 Swap:              0           0           0

This patch migrates the last subpage to a small folio and immediately
returns the large folio to the system. It benefits both memory availability
and anti-fragmentation.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240308092721.144735-1-21cnbao@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@oppo.com>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Cc: Lance Yang <ioworker0@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
mm/memory.c