[PATCH V2 2/5] mm/khugepaged: count small VMAs towards scan limit

From: Shivank Garg
Date: Wed Dec 24 2025 - 06:18:18 EST


The khugepaged_scan_mm_slot() uses a 'progress' counter to limit the
amount of work performed and consists of three components:
1. Transitioning to a new mm (+1).
2. Skipping an unsuitable VMA (+1).
3. Scanning a PMD-sized range (+HPAGE_PMD_NR).

Consider a 1MB VMA sitting between two 2MB alignment boundaries:

vma1 vma2 vma3
+----------+------+----------+
|2M |1M |2M |
+----------+------+----------+
^ ^
start end
^
hstart,hend

In this case, for vma2:
hstart = round_up(start, HPAGE_PMD_SIZE) -> Next 2MB alignment
hend = round_down(end, HPAGE_PMD_SIZE) -> Prev 2MB alignment

Currently, since `hend <= hstart`, VMAs that are too small or unaligned
to contain a hugepage are skipped without incrementing 'progress'.
A process containing a large number of such small VMAs will unfairly
consume more CPU cycles before yielding compared to a process with
fewer, larger, or aligned VMAs.

Fix this by incrementing progress when the `hend <= hstart` condition
is met.

Additionally, change 'progress' type to `unsigned int` to match both
the 'pages' type and the function return value.

Suggested-by: Wei Yang <richard.weiyang@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Shivank Garg <shivankg@xxxxxxx>
---
mm/khugepaged.c | 4 ++--
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/khugepaged.c b/mm/khugepaged.c
index 107146f012b1..0b549c3250f9 100644
--- a/mm/khugepaged.c
+++ b/mm/khugepaged.c
@@ -2403,7 +2403,7 @@ static unsigned int khugepaged_scan_mm_slot(unsigned int pages, int *result,
struct mm_slot *slot;
struct mm_struct *mm;
struct vm_area_struct *vma;
- int progress = 0;
+ unsigned int progress = 0;

VM_BUG_ON(!pages);
lockdep_assert_held(&khugepaged_mm_lock);
@@ -2447,7 +2447,7 @@ static unsigned int khugepaged_scan_mm_slot(unsigned int pages, int *result,
}
hstart = round_up(vma->vm_start, HPAGE_PMD_SIZE);
hend = round_down(vma->vm_end, HPAGE_PMD_SIZE);
- if (khugepaged_scan.address > hend) {
+ if (khugepaged_scan.address > hend || hend <= hstart) {
progress++;
continue;
}
--
2.43.0