Re: questions about init_memory_mapping_high()

[Yinghai Lu]

On 02/23/2011 12:46 PM, Tejun Heo wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:24:58PM -0800, Yinghai Lu wrote:
>>>    I guess this was the reason why the commit message showed usage of
>>>    2MiB mappings so that each node would end up with their own third
>>>    level page tables.  Is this something we need to optimize for?  I
>>>    don't recall seeing recent machines which don't use 1GiB pages for
>>>    the linear mapping.  Are there NUMA machines which can't use 1GiB
>>>    mappings?
>>
>> till now:
>> amd 64 cpu does support 1gb page.
>>
>> Intel CPU Nehalem-EX does not. and several vendors do provide 8 sockets
>> NUMA system with 1024g and 2048g RAM
> 
> That's interesting.  Didn't expect that.  So, this one is an actually
> valid reason for implementing per node mapping.  Is this Nehalem-EX
> only thing?  Or is it applicable to all xeons upto now?

only have access for Nehalem-EX and Westmere-EX till now.

> 
>>> 3. The new code creates linear mapping only for memory regions where
>>>    e820 actually says there is memory as opposed to mapping from base
>>>    to top.  Again, I'm not sure what the intention of this change was.
>>>    Having larger mappings over holes is much cheaper than having to
>>>    break down the mappings into smaller sized mappings around the
>>>    holes both in terms of memory and run time overhead.  Why would we
>>>    want to match the linear address mapping to the e820 map exactly?
>>
>> we don't need to map those holes if there is any.
> 
> Yeah, sure, my point was that not mapping those holes is likely to be
> worse.  Wouldn't it be better to get low and high ends of the occupied
> area and expand those to larger mapping size?  It's worse to match the
> memory map exactly.  You unnecessarily end up with smaller mappings.

it will reuse previous not used entries in the init_memory_mapping().

> 
>> for hotplug case, they should map new added memory later.
> 
> Sure.
> 
>>> Also, Yinghai, can you please try to write commit descriptions with
>>> more details?  It really sucks for other people when they have to
>>> guess what the actual changes and underlying intentions are.  The
>>> commit adding init_memory_mapping_high() is very anemic on details
>>> about how the behavior changes and the only intention given there is
>>> RED-PEN removal even which is largely a miss.
>>
>> i don't know what you are talking about. that changelog is clear enough.
> 
> Ah well, if you still think the changelog is clear enough, I give up.
> I guess I'll just keep rewriting your changelogs.

Thank you very much.

Yinghai
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