Re: [PATCH v6 0/7] Buddy allocator like (or non-uniform) folio split

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2025 at 09:11:39AM -0500, Zi Yan wrote:
> Existing uniform split requires 2^(order % XA_CHUNK_SHIFT) xa_node allocations
> during split, when the folio needs to be split to order-0. But non-uniform split
> only requires at most 1 xa_node allocation. For example, to split an order-9
> folio, 8 xa_nodes are needed for uniform split, since the folio takes 8
> multi-index slots in the xarray. But for non-uniform split, only the slot
> containing the given struct page needs a xa_node after the split. There will be
> a 7 xa_node saving.
> 
> Hi Matthew,
> 
> Do you mind checking my statement above on xarray memory saving? And correct me
> if I miss anything. Thanks.

We currently have a bug where we can't split order-12 (or above) to order-0 (or anything in the range 0-5) as we'd need to allocate two layers of nodes, and
the preallocation can't do that.

As part of your series, I'd like to remove that limitation, so we'd need
to allocate log_64(n - m) [ok, more complex than that, but ykwim].  So
it's not quite "only allocate one node", but it's allocate O(log(current
number of nodes needed to be allocated)).

Makes sense?