[RFC 00/10] mm: thp: always enable mTHP support

From: Luiz Capitulino

Date: Thu Nov 06 2025 - 16:29:21 EST


Today, if an architecture implements has_transparent_hugepage() and the CPU
lacks support for PMD-sized pages, the THP code disables all THP, including
mTHP support. In addition, the kernel lacks a well defined API to check for
PMD-sized page support. It currently relies on has_transparent_hugepage()
and thp_disabled_by_hw(), but they are not well defined and are tied to
THP support.

This series addresses both issues by introducing a new well defined API
to query PMD-sized page support: pgtable_has_pmd_leaves(). Using this
new helper, we ensure that mTHP remains enabled even when the
architecture or CPU doesn't support PMD-sized pages.

An important detail is that we need to do the same refactoring for
has_transparent_pud_hugepage(). I actually have patches for this one
too, I'm not including them here because I want to get some initial
feedback on the general approach first (and maybe it's better to
do that in a separate series).

Thanks to David Hildenbrand for suggesting this improvement and for
providing guidance (all bugs and misconcentpions are mine).

Luiz Capitulino (10):
docs: tmpfs: remove implementation detail reference
mm: introduce pgtable_has_pmd_leaves()
drivers: dax: use pgtable_has_pmd_leaves()
drivers: i915 selftest: use pgtable_has_pmd_leaves()
drivers: nvdimm: use pgtable_has_pmd_leaves()
mm: debug_vm_pgtable: use pgtable_has_pmd_leaves()
treewide: rename has_transparent_hugepage() to arch_has_pmd_leaves()
mm: replace thp_disabled_by_hw() with pgtable_has_pmd_leaves()
mm: thp: always enable mTHP support
mm: thp: x86: cleanup PSE feature bit usage

Documentation/filesystems/tmpfs.rst | 5 ++---
arch/mips/include/asm/pgtable.h | 4 ++--
arch/mips/mm/tlb-r4k.c | 4 ++--
arch/powerpc/include/asm/book3s/64/hash-4k.h | 2 +-
arch/powerpc/include/asm/book3s/64/hash-64k.h | 2 +-
arch/powerpc/include/asm/book3s/64/pgtable.h | 10 +++++-----
arch/powerpc/include/asm/book3s/64/radix.h | 2 +-
arch/powerpc/mm/book3s64/hash_pgtable.c | 4 ++--
arch/s390/include/asm/pgtable.h | 4 ++--
arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable.h | 6 ------
arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_32.h | 6 ++++++
drivers/dax/dax-private.h | 2 +-
.../gpu/drm/i915/gem/selftests/huge_pages.c | 2 +-
drivers/nvdimm/pfn_devs.c | 4 ++--
include/linux/huge_mm.h | 7 -------
include/linux/pgtable.h | 14 +++++++++++--
mm/debug_vm_pgtable.c | 20 +++++++++----------
mm/huge_memory.c | 13 ++++++------
mm/memory.c | 12 ++++++++++-
mm/shmem.c | 8 ++++----
20 files changed, 72 insertions(+), 59 deletions(-)

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2.51.1