[PATCH v2 3/4] mm/vmalloc: Use kvmalloc to allocate the table of pages

From: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)
Date: Wed Mar 24 2021 - 11:10:01 EST


If we're trying to allocate 4MB of memory, the table will be 8KiB in size
(1024 pointers * 8 bytes per pointer), which can usually be satisfied
by a kmalloc (which is significantly faster). Instead of changing this
open-coded implementation, just use kvmalloc().

This improves the allocation speed of vmalloc(4MB) by approximately
5% in our benchmark. It's still dominated by the 1024 calls to
alloc_pages_node(), which will be the subject of a later patch.

Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/vmalloc.c | 7 +------
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/vmalloc.c b/mm/vmalloc.c
index a22241e9c363..a9ed2a4b697e 100644
--- a/mm/vmalloc.c
+++ b/mm/vmalloc.c
@@ -2801,13 +2801,8 @@ static void *__vmalloc_area_node(struct vm_struct *area, gfp_t gfp_mask,
gfp_mask |= __GFP_HIGHMEM;

/* Please note that the recursion is strictly bounded. */
- if (array_size > PAGE_SIZE) {
- pages = __vmalloc_node(array_size, 1, nested_gfp, node,
+ pages = kvmalloc_node_caller(array_size, nested_gfp, node,
area->caller);
- } else {
- pages = kmalloc_node(array_size, nested_gfp, node);
- }
-
if (!pages) {
free_vm_area(area);
return NULL;
--
2.30.2