Re: [PATCH 00/12] [PATCH v14 00/12] migrate on fault for device pages

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:34:09 +0300 mpenttil@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> From: Mika Penttilä <mpenttil@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> Currently, the way device page faulting and migration works
> is not optimal, if you want to do both fault handling and
> migration at once.
> 
> Being able to migrate not present pages (or pages mapped with incorrect
> permissions, eg. COW) to the GPU requires doing either of the
> following sequences:
> 
> 1. hmm_range_fault() - fault in non-present pages with correct permissions, etc.
> 2. migrate_vma_*() - migrate the pages
> 
> Or:
> 
> 1. migrate_vma_*() - migrate present pages
> 2. If non-present pages detected by migrate_vma_*():
>    a) call hmm_range_fault() to fault pages in
>    b) call migrate_vma_*() again to migrate now present pages
> 
> The problem with the first sequence is that you always have to do two
> page walks even when most of the time the pages are present or zero page
> mappings so the common case takes a performance hit.
> 
> The second sequence is better for the common case, but far worse if
> pages aren't present because now you have to walk the page tables three
> times (once to find the page is not present, once so hmm_range_fault()
> can find a non-present page to fault in and once again to setup the
> migration). It is also tricky to code correctly. One page table walk
> could costs over 1000 cpu cycles on X86-64, which is a significant hit.
> 
> We should be able to walk the page table once, faulting
> pages in as required and replacing them with migration entries if
> requested.

Sounds sensible.

> Tested in X86-64 VM with HMM test device, passing the selftests.
> For performance, the migrate throughput tests from the selftests
> show similar numbers (within error margin) as unmodified kernel.

But no performance benefits are demonstrated?