Re: [RFC PATCH 0/7] Memory hotplug/hotremove at subsection size

From: David Hildenbrand
Date: Thu May 06 2021 - 11:39:36 EST


On 06.05.21 17:31, David Hildenbrand wrote:
On 06.05.21 17:26, Zi Yan wrote:
From: Zi Yan <ziy@xxxxxxxxxx>

Hi all,

This patchset tries to remove the restriction on memory hotplug/hotremove
granularity, which is always greater or equal to memory section size[1].
With the patchset, kernel is able to online/offline memory at a size independent
of memory section size, as small as 2MB (the subsection size).

... which doesn't make any sense as we can only online/offline whole
memory block devices.


The motivation is to increase MAX_ORDER of the buddy allocator and pageblock
size without increasing memory hotplug/hotremove granularity at the same time,

Gah, no. Please no. No.

so that the kernel can allocator 1GB pages using buddy allocator and utilizes
existing pageblock based anti-fragmentation, paving the road for 1GB THP
support[2].

Not like this, please no.


The patchset utilizes the existing subsection support[3] and changes the
section size alignment checks to subsection size alignment checks. There are
also changes to pageblock code to support partial pageblocks, when pageblock
size is increased along with MAX_ORDER. Increasing pageblock size can enable
kernel to utilize existing anti-fragmentation mechanism for gigantic page
allocations.

Please not like this.


The last patch increases SECTION_SIZE_BITS to demonstrate the use of memory
hotplug/hotremove subsection, but is not intended to be merged as is. It is
there in case one wants to try this out and will be removed during the final
submission.

Feel free to give suggestions and comments. I am looking forward to your
feedback.

Please not like this.


And just to be clear (I think I mentioned this already to you?): Nack to increasing the section size. Nack to increasing the pageblock order. Please find different ways to group on gigantic-pages level. There are alternative ideas floating around.

Semi-nack to increasing MAX_ORDER. I first want to see alloc_contig_range() be able to fully and cleanly handle allocations < MAX_ORDER in all cases (especially !CMA and !ZONE_MOVABLE) before we go down that path.

--
Thanks,

David / dhildenb