Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] mm: support zswap-backed anonymous large folio swapin

[Yosry Ahmed]

On Fri, May 08, 2026 at 08:18:29PM +0000, fujunjie wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This RFC explores anonymous large folio swapin when a contiguous swap
> range is backed consistently by zswap.
> 
> Large folio swapout to zswap is already supported by storing each base
> page in the folio as a separate zswap entry. The anonymous synchronous
> swapin path has remained order-0 once zswap has ever been enabled:
> zswap_load() rejected large folios, and alloc_swap_folio() avoided large
> folio allocation to protect against mixed backend ranges.
> 
> This RFC keeps the scope intentionally conservative. It does not try to
> read one large folio from mixed zswap and disk backends, and it does not
> change shmem swapin. Shmem still has its existing zswap fallback and is
> left for later discussion. For anonymous swapin, the backend rule is made
> explicit:
> 
> - a range fully absent from zswap can keep using the disk backend
> - a range fully present in zswap can be decompressed into a large folio
> - a mixed zswap/non-zswap range falls back to order-0 swapin
> 
> The series adds a zswap range query helper, teaches zswap_load() to
> decompress all-zswap large folios one base page at a time, accounts mTHP
> swpin for zswap-loaded large folios, retries synchronous large-folio
> insertion races with order-0 swapin, and removes the anonymous
> zswap-never-enabled restriction once mixed ranges are filtered.
> 
> I tested the series with a full bzImage build using CONFIG_ZSWAP=y,
> CONFIG_ZRAM=y, CONFIG_MEMCG=y and CONFIG_THP_SWAP=y.
> 
> The QEMU/KVM runs covered both the fully-zswap path and the mixed-backend
> fallback path. In the all-zswap run, a 512MiB anonymous mapping was faulted
> as 8192 64KiB groups, reclaimed into zswap, and faulted back. Reclaim
> reported mthp64_zswpout=8192 and zswpout=131072. Refault then reported
> mthp64_swpin=8192 and zswpin=131072, and pagemap/kpageflags showed 8192
> order-4 THP groups in the mapping.
> 
> In the mixed-backend run, the workload used a 64MiB anonymous mapping
> split into 1024 64KiB groups. After shrinker debugfs wrote back exactly
> one zswap base-page entry, refault left 1023 order-4 THP groups and one
> order-0 mixed group. The kernel stats matched that shape:
> mthp64_swpin=1023, zswpin=16383 and zswpwb=1.
> 
> CONFIG_SHRINKER_DEBUG is only a test aid for making that one zswap
> writeback deterministic; it is not required by the implementation.
> 
> Nhat Pham's active Virtual Swap Space series is adjacent work. It moves
> swap cache and zswap entry state into a virtual swap descriptor, and lists
> mixed backing THP swapin as a future use case. This RFC is independent and
> works with the current swap/zswap infrastructure, but may need rebasing if
> VSS lands first.
> 
> Feedback would be especially helpful on:
> 
> 1. whether it makes sense to support all-zswap large folio swapin first,
>    while keeping mixed zswap/disk ranges on the order-0 fallback path

I think so, yes, but based on my read of the code this RFC only affects
synchornous swapin, which is more-or-less zram+zswap. This is an
uncommon setup outside of testing.

> 2. whether a follow-up for mixed zswap/disk large folio swapin would be
>    useful after this RFC

That's a heavier lift and I think we should consider this in the
longer-term, once the virtual swap work settles down. This is
conceptually not a zswap thing, you can have parts of a folio on disk,
in zswap, in the zeromap, etc. So it needs to be handled at a higher
layer (virtual swap for example).

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> ---
> 
> fujunjie (5):
>   mm: zswap: decompress into a folio subpage
>   mm: zswap: add a zswap entry batch helper
>   mm: zswap: load fully stored large folios
>   mm: swap: fall back to order-0 after large swapin races
>   mm: swap: allow zswap-backed large folio swapin
> 
>  Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst |   4 +-
>  include/linux/zswap.h                      |   9 ++
>  mm/memory.c                                |  67 ++++++++-----
>  mm/swap_state.c                            |  23 +++--
>  mm/zswap.c                                 | 111 ++++++++++++++++-----
>  5 files changed, 154 insertions(+), 60 deletions(-)
> 
> 
> base-commit: 917719c412c48687d4a176965d1fa35320ec457c
> -- 
> 2.34.1
> 
>