Re: [PATCH v11 01/26] mm: introduce CONFIG_SPECULATIVE_PAGE_FAULT

From: Laurent Dufour
Date: Tue May 22 2018 - 06:53:14 EST


On 17/05/2018 18:36, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 05/17/2018 04:06 AM, Laurent Dufour wrote:
>> This configuration variable will be used to build the code needed to
>> handle speculative page fault.
>>
>> By default it is turned off, and activated depending on architecture
>> support, ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL, SMP and MMU.
>>
>> The architecture support is needed since the speculative page fault handler
>> is called from the architecture's page faulting code, and some code has to
>> be added there to handle the speculative handler.
>>
>> The dependency on ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL is required because vm_normal_page()
>> does processing that is not compatible with the speculative handling in the
>> case ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL is not set.
>>
>> Suggested-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Suggested-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> Signed-off-by: Laurent Dufour <ldufour@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> ---
>> mm/Kconfig | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
>> 1 file changed, 22 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/mm/Kconfig b/mm/Kconfig
>> index 1d0888c5b97a..a38796276113 100644
>> --- a/mm/Kconfig
>> +++ b/mm/Kconfig
>> @@ -761,3 +761,25 @@ config GUP_BENCHMARK
>>
>> config ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL
>> bool
>> +
>> +config ARCH_SUPPORTS_SPECULATIVE_PAGE_FAULT
>> + def_bool n
>> +
>> +config SPECULATIVE_PAGE_FAULT
>> + bool "Speculative page faults"
>> + default y
>> + depends on ARCH_SUPPORTS_SPECULATIVE_PAGE_FAULT
>> + depends on ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL && MMU && SMP
>> + help
>> + Try to handle user space page faults without holding the mmap_sem.
>> +
>> + This should allow better concurrency for massively threaded process
>
> processes
>
>> + since the page fault handler will not wait for other threads memory
>
> thread's
>
>> + layout change to be done, assuming that this change is done in another
>> + part of the process's memory space. This type of page fault is named
>> + speculative page fault.
>> +
>> + If the speculative page fault fails because of a concurrency is
>
> because a concurrency is
>
>> + detected or because underlying PMD or PTE tables are not yet
>> + allocating, it is failing its processing and a classic page fault
>
> allocated, the speculative page fault fails and a classic page fault
>
>> + is then tried.
>
>
> Also, all of the help text (below the "help" line) should be indented by
> 1 tab + 2 spaces (in coding-style.rst).

Thanks, Randy for reviewing my miserable English grammar.
I'll fix that and the indentation.