[PATCH V3 2/5] mm/khugepaged: count small VMAs towards scan limit
From: Shivank Garg
Date: Sun Jan 18 2026 - 14:27:06 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>
Reviewed-by: Wei Yang <richard.weiyang@xxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Shivank Garg <shivankg@xxxxxxx>
---
Incorporate comment feedback from Lance:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/6b408736-978a-4d40-adfc-97819951c3a6@xxxxxxxxx
mm/khugepaged.c | 5 +++--
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/mm/khugepaged.c b/mm/khugepaged.c
index 984294a16861..93ce39915f4a 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 +2447,8 @@ 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) {
+ /* VMA already scanned or too small/unaligned for hugepage. */
progress++;
continue;
}
--
2.43.0