[PATCH v2 00/17] mm/huge_memory: clean up folio split and lift swapcache split limits

From: Kairui Song via B4 Relay

Date: Wed Aug 12 2026 - 14:49:18 EST


This series clean up the split code, add better swap cache split support
for mappingless, large order, uniform and non-uniform split. Generic
performance is on par or slightly better, and stack usage is reduced.

The swap cache infrastructure can handle non-uniform or high order folio
replace, so there is no reason for either restriction from the THP side.
What stands in the way is the mixed anon/file folio split routine,
which makes lifting the restrictions hard to follow, and it already
carries some buggy or redundant checks.

So this series cleans up the split path and separates anon and file
splitting into two helpers. The file split path never sees a swap
cache folio, and that is now enforced up front: a folio that is both
in the page cache and the swap cache can only be a shmem folio, which
remains unsupported and is rejected early. That helps to rule out swap
cache handling in that part completely. Only the anon split path
handles swap cache folios, with an anon mapping or mappingless:
either way the splitting is similar, and non-uniform split is
supported as well.

Order-1 is still forbidden for swap cache splitting. In theory it is
doable for shmem swap cache folios, but a mappingless swap cache
folio cannot currently be told apart from a shmem one, so forbid it
for all swap cache folios for now.

Testing:

The in-tree split_huge_page_test selftest (uniform, non-uniform and
in-folio-offset splits of anon and pagecache folios) passes 62/62 on
the patched kernel.

ftrace function_graph tracing filtered on __folio_split() was used to
compare per-call durations between the base and the patched kernel on
the same x86-64 box (interleaved runs across alternating reboots;
mean +- stddev of the per-run averages, 135 split calls per run):

base: 24 runs, 69.6 +- 0.7 us per __folio_split()
patched: 26 runs, 68.8 +- 1.3 us per __folio_split()

The patched kernel is consistently ~1% faster; with this sample
count the difference is outside run-to-run noise.

On x86-64 with gcc 12 (-fstack-usage), the stack frame of
__folio_split() shrinks from 240 to 96 bytes, and the worst-case
split call chain from ~544 to ~384 (anon) or ~464 (file) bytes.

Bloat-o-meter shows a tiny growth of huge_memory.o:
before=58419 after=58446, chg +0.05% (+27 bytes).

Signed-off-by: Kairui Song <kasong@xxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Changes in v2:
- Return -EBUSY instead of -EINVAL for swap cache & shmem folio split
attempt.
- Introduce a for_each_folio_safe macro to dedupliate the code and
hightlight the reason we need to keep the iterate safe from folio
freeing. [ Zi Yan ]
- Rename __split_unmapped_folio() to __split_frozen_folio [ Zi Yan ]
- Rename __folio_freeze_split_unmap_anon. [ Zi Yan ]
- Several comment improments [ Zi Yan ]
- Drop an unused do_lru argument.
- Previouse test results are basically unchanged, stack usage reduced,
object very slightly larger.
- Link to v1: https://patch.msgid.link/20260808-swap-thp-cleanup-v1-0-689939a7ccc3@xxxxxxxxxxx

To: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Chris Li <chrisl@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Kairui Song <kasong@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Kemeng Shi <shikemeng@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Baoquan He <baoquan.he@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Barry Song <baohua@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Youngjun Park <youngjun.park@xxxxxxx>
To: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Lorenzo Stoakes <ljs@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Zi Yan <ziy@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Liam R. Howlett" <liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Nico Pache <nico.pache@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx>
To: Dev Jain <dev.jain@xxxxxxx>
To: Lance Yang <lance.yang@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Usama Arif <usama.arif@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

---
Kairui Song (17):
mm/swap: fix off-by-one in swap cache replace sanity check
mm/huge_memory: fix rejection of swap cache folios with a mapping
mm/huge_memory: invert folio_ref_freeze() check to reduce indentation
mm/huge_memory: split the routine for splitting anon and file folio
mm/huge_memory: rename __split_unmapped_folio() to __split_frozen_folio()
mm/huge_memory: consolidate irq and locking for folio split
mm/huge_memory: move EOF trimming into the file split helper
mm/huge_memory: move unmap and remap into the split helpers
mm/huge_memory: move anon_vma and filemap management into split helpers
mm/huge_memory: move memcg switch into the file split helper
mm/huge_memory: allow splitting mappingless swap cache folios
mm/huge_memory: add kerneldoc for the split helpers
mm/huge_memory: drop the unused do_lru argument of the file split helper
mm/huge_memory: clean up after-split folio freeing in __folio_split
mm/huge_memory: lift order-0 restriction for swapcache split
mm/huge_memory: clarify supported split orders in comment
mm/huge_memory: count only swap cache refs in anon folio split

mm/huge_memory.c | 636 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------------
mm/swap_state.c | 3 +-
2 files changed, 344 insertions(+), 295 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: 1029098ee3275ea5b78e329ce132262affa2f8cc
change-id: 20260804-swap-thp-cleanup-6ce2be6cf3b8

Best regards,
--
Kairui Song <kasong@xxxxxxxxxxx>