Re: [RFC 0/4] mm, swap: Enable THP SWAP for PowerPC Book3S64

[YoungJun Park]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 06:49:30PM +0530, Ritesh Harjani (IBM) wrote:
> On PowerPC Book3S64, MMU is selected at runtime, so macros like PMD_SHIFT are
> effectively runtime variables in the Book3S64 code. THP swap code uses these
> macros for e.g. to size some of its array data structures based on PMD_ORDER.
> This patch series makes that usage dependent on the runtime variable.
> 
> Sayali did some performance runs of this on Book3S64 with Radix and it gives
> 40-50% performance improvement. We also plan to run it with Hash, will soon
> update the results.
> 
> Note that this patch series is based out of linux-next (next-20260608).
> 
> Ritesh Harjani (IBM) (4):
>   include/linux/swap.h: Remove unused leftovers
>   mm, swap: make SWAPFILE_CLUSTER runtime
>   mm, swap: make SWAP_NR_ORDERS runtime
>   powerpc: Kconfig: Enable THP_SWAP on Book3S64
> 
>  arch/powerpc/platforms/Kconfig.cputype |   1 +
>  include/linux/swap.h                   |  17 +---
>  mm/swap.h                              |   5 +-
>  mm/swap_table.h                        |   6 +-
>  mm/swapfile.c                          | 132 ++++++++++++++++++-------
>  5 files changed, 106 insertions(+), 55 deletions(-)
> 
> --
> 2.39.5
>
Hello!

Instead of making SWAP_NR_ORDERS fully runtime, could we set it to the max
PMD_ORDER possible on PowerPC Book3S64 as a compile-time constant in the
swap.h ifdef block? (My assumtion is PMD_ORDER max not too big.)

I think the general runtime version adds cost. It impacts all other archs.
percpu_swap_cluster needs a runtime alloc,
the si/offset and nonfull/frag arrays become separate pointers, and some
accesses get one more indirection. And for nr_orders=1, the allocation
itself is just waste. 

With a compile-time possible max constant, the only downside is some acceptable amount of
wasted bytes per CPU / per device on Book3S64 (the unused entries in the swap
offset cache and the nonfull/frag lists), with no perf impact. the perf
improvement comes from THP swap itself, right? Other arches see no
impact at all.

patch 2 looks fine as is. SWAPFILE_CLUSTER backs much bigger per-cluster
arrays, so runtime sizing makes sense there, and it looks like no impact to
other arches or the current code.

Thanks!
Youngjun Park