Re: [PATCH rdma-next 1/4] lib/scatterlist: Refactor sg_alloc_table_from_pages

From: Maor Gottlieb
Date: Mon Sep 07 2020 - 08:36:47 EST



On 9/7/2020 10:29 AM, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
On Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 06:54:34PM +0300, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
From: Maor Gottlieb <maorg@xxxxxxxxxx>

Currently, sg_alloc_table_from_pages doesn't support dynamic chaining of
SG entries. Therefore it requires from user to allocate all the pages in
advance and hold them in a large buffer. Such a buffer consumes a lot of
temporary memory in HPC systems which do a very large memory registration.

The next patches introduce API for dynamically allocation from pages and
it requires us to do the following:
* Extract the code to alloc_from_pages_common.
* Change the build of the table to iterate on the chunks and not on the
SGEs. It will allow dynamic allocation of more SGEs.

Since sg_alloc_table_from_pages allocate exactly the number of chunks,
therefore chunks are equal to the number of SG entries.
Given how few users __sg_alloc_table_from_pages has, what about just
switching it to your desired calling conventions without another helper?

I tried it now. It didn't save a lot.  Please give me your decision and if needed I will update accordingly.