Re: [PATCH v7 00/16] mm: folio_zero_user: clear contiguous pages

[Raghavendra K T]

On 9/17/2025 8:54 PM, Ankur Arora wrote:
> This series adds clearing of contiguous page ranges for hugepages,
> improving on the current page-at-a-time approach in two ways:
> 
>   - amortizes the per-page setup cost over a larger extent
> 
>   - when using string instructions, exposes the real region size
>     to the processor.
> 
> A processor could use a knowledge of the extent to optimize the
> clearing. AMD Zen uarchs, as an example, elide allocation of
> cachelines for regions larger than L3-size.
[...]

Hello,

Feel free to add

Tested-by: Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@xxxxxxx>
 
for whole series.

[ I do understand that there may be minor tweeks to clear page patches
to convert nth_page once David's changes are in]

SUT: AMD Zen5

I also did a quick hack to unconditionally use CLZERO/MOVNT on top of
Ankur's series to test how much additional benefits can architectural
enhancements bring in. [ Inline with second part of Ankur's old series before
preempt lazy changes ]. Please note that it is only for testing ideally
for lower sizes we would want rep stosb only. and threshold at which
we need to do non-temporal copy should be a function of L3 and / OR L2 size
perhaps.

Results:
base      : 6.17-rc6 + perf bench patches
clearpage : 6.17-rc6 + whole series from Ankur 
clzero    : 6.17-rc6 + Ankur's series +  clzero (below patch)
movnt     : 6.17-rc6 + Ankur's series +  movnt (below patch)

Command run: ./perf bench mem mmap -p 2MB -f demand -s 64GB -l 10

Higher = better

                   preempt = lazy (GB/sec)  preempt = voluntary (GB/sec)

base               20.655559                19.712500

clearpage          35.060572                34.533414      

clzero             66.948422                66.067265

movnt              51.593506                51.403765


CLZERO/MOVNT experimental patch. Hope I have not missed anything here :)

-- >8 --
diff --git a/arch/x86/Kconfig b/arch/x86/Kconfig
index 52c8910ba2ef..26cef2b187b9 100644
--- a/arch/x86/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/x86/Kconfig
@@ -3170,6 +3170,8 @@ config HAVE_ATOMIC_IOMAP
 	def_bool y
 	depends on X86_32
 
+source "arch/x86/Kconfig.cpy"
+
 source "arch/x86/kvm/Kconfig"
 
 source "arch/x86/Kconfig.cpufeatures"
diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/page_64.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/page_64.h
index 2361066d175e..aa2e62bbfa62 100644
--- a/arch/x86/include/asm/page_64.h
+++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/page_64.h
@@ -84,11 +84,23 @@ static inline void clear_pages(void *addr, unsigned int npages)
 	 */
 	kmsan_unpoison_memory(addr, len);
 	asm volatile(ALTERNATIVE_2("call memzero_page_aligned_unrolled",
-				   "shrq $3, %%rcx; rep stosq", X86_FEATURE_REP_GOOD,
-				   "rep stosb", X86_FEATURE_ERMS)
-			: "+c" (len), "+D" (addr), ASM_CALL_CONSTRAINT
-			: "a" (0)
-			: "cc", "memory");
+				"shrq $3, %%rcx; rep stosq", X86_FEATURE_REP_GOOD,
+#if defined(CONFIG_CLEARPAGE_CLZERO)
+		"call clear_pages_clzero", X86_FEATURE_CLZERO)
+		: "+c" (len), "+D" (addr), ASM_CALL_CONSTRAINT
+		: "a" (0)
+		: "cc", "memory");
+#elif defined(CONFIG_CLEARPAGE_MOVNT)
+		"call clear_pages_movnt", X86_FEATURE_XMM2)
+		: "+c" (len), "+D" (addr), ASM_CALL_CONSTRAINT
+		: "a" (0)
+		: "cc", "memory");
+#else
+		"rep stosb", X86_FEATURE_ERMS)
+		: "+c" (len), "+D" (addr), ASM_CALL_CONSTRAINT
+		: "a" (0)
+		: "cc", "memory");
+#endif
 }
 #define clear_pages clear_pages
 
diff --git a/arch/x86/lib/clear_page_64.S b/arch/x86/lib/clear_page_64.S
index 27debe0c018c..0848287446dd 100644
--- a/arch/x86/lib/clear_page_64.S
+++ b/arch/x86/lib/clear_page_64.S
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 #include <linux/cfi_types.h>
 #include <linux/objtool.h>
 #include <asm/asm.h>
+#include <asm/page_types.h>
 
 /*
  * Zero page aligned region.
@@ -119,3 +120,40 @@ SYM_FUNC_START(rep_stos_alternative)
 	_ASM_EXTABLE_UA(17b, .Lclear_user_tail)
 SYM_FUNC_END(rep_stos_alternative)
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(rep_stos_alternative)
+
+SYM_FUNC_START(clear_pages_movnt)
+	.p2align 4
+.Lstart:
+	movnti  %rax, 0x00(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x08(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x10(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x18(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x20(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x28(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x30(%rdi)
+	movnti  %rax, 0x38(%rdi)
+	addq    $0x40, %rdi
+	subl    $0x40, %ecx
+	ja      .Lstart
+	RET
+SYM_FUNC_END(clear_pages_movnt)
+EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(clear_pages_movnt)
+
+/*
+ * Zero a page using clzero (On AMD, with CPU_FEATURE_CLZERO.)
+ *
+ * Caller needs to issue a sfence at the end.
+ */
+
+SYM_FUNC_START(clear_pages_clzero)
+	movq	%rdi,%rax
+	.p2align 4
+.Liter:
+	clzero
+	addq    $0x40, %rax
+	subl    $0x40, %ecx
+	ja      .Liter
+	sfence
+	RET
+SYM_FUNC_END(clear_pages_clzero)
+EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(clear_pages_clzero)
-- 
2.43.0