[PATCH] low-latency zap_page_range

From: Robert Love (rml@tech9.net)
Date: Sat Jul 20 2002 - 15:20:26 EST


The lock hold time in zap_page_range is horrid. This patch breaks the
work up into chunks and relinquishes the lock after each iteration.
This drastically lowers latency by creating a preemption point, as well
as lowering lock contention.

The chunk size is ZAP_BLOCK_SIZE and currently 256*PAGE_SIZE.

This lowers the maximum latency in zap_page_range from 10~20ms (on a
dual Athlon - one of the worst latencies recorded) to unmeasurable.

I made a couple other cleanups and optimizations:

        - remove unneeded dir variable and call to pgd_offset - nothing
          uses this anymore as the code was pushed to unmap_page_range

        - removed duplicated start variable - it is the same as address

        - BUG -> BUG_ON in unmap_page_range

        - remove redundant BUG from zap_page_range - the same check is
          done in unmap_page_range

        - better comments

Patch is against 2.5.27, please apply.

        Robert Love

diff -urN linux-2.5.27/mm/memory.c linux/mm/memory.c
--- linux-2.5.27/mm/memory.c Sat Jul 20 12:11:17 2002
+++ linux/mm/memory.c Sat Jul 20 12:56:18 2002
@@ -390,8 +390,8 @@
 {
         pgd_t * dir;
 
- if (address >= end)
- BUG();
+ BUG_ON(address >= end);
+
         dir = pgd_offset(vma->vm_mm, address);
         tlb_start_vma(tlb, vma);
         do {
@@ -402,34 +402,42 @@
         tlb_end_vma(tlb, vma);
 }
 
-/*
- * remove user pages in a given range.
+#define ZAP_BLOCK_SIZE (256 * PAGE_SIZE) /* how big a chunk we loop over */
+
+/**
+ * zap_page_range - remove user pages in a given range
+ * @vma: vm_area_struct holding the applicable pages
+ * @address: starting address of pages to zap
+ * @size: number of bytes to zap
  */
 void zap_page_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long address, unsigned long size)
 {
         struct mm_struct *mm = vma->vm_mm;
         mmu_gather_t *tlb;
- pgd_t * dir;
- unsigned long start = address, end = address + size;
-
- dir = pgd_offset(mm, address);
+ unsigned long end, block;
 
         /*
- * This is a long-lived spinlock. That's fine.
- * There's no contention, because the page table
- * lock only protects against kswapd anyway, and
- * even if kswapd happened to be looking at this
- * process we _want_ it to get stuck.
+ * This was once a long-held spinlock. Now we break the
+ * work up into ZAP_BLOCK_SIZE units and relinquish the
+ * lock after each interation. This drastically lowers
+ * lock contention and allows for a preemption point.
          */
- if (address >= end)
- BUG();
- spin_lock(&mm->page_table_lock);
- flush_cache_range(vma, address, end);
-
- tlb = tlb_gather_mmu(mm, 0);
- unmap_page_range(tlb, vma, address, end);
- tlb_finish_mmu(tlb, start, end);
- spin_unlock(&mm->page_table_lock);
+ while (size) {
+ block = (size > ZAP_BLOCK_SIZE) ? ZAP_BLOCK_SIZE : size;
+ end = address + block;
+
+ spin_lock(&mm->page_table_lock);
+
+ flush_cache_range(vma, address, end);
+ tlb = tlb_gather_mmu(mm, 0);
+ unmap_page_range(tlb, vma, address, end);
+ tlb_finish_mmu(tlb, address, end);
+
+ spin_unlock(&mm->page_table_lock);
+
+ address += block;
+ size -= block;
+ }
 }
 
 /*

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 23 2002 - 22:00:33 EST