[PATCH 6.1 2/3] arm64: mm: Batch dsb and isb when populating pgtables

From: Ryan Roberts

Date: Tue Feb 17 2026 - 08:36:43 EST


[ Upstream commit 1fcb7cea8a5f7747e02230f816c2c80b060d9517 ]

After removing uneccessary TLBIs, the next bottleneck when creating the
page tables for the linear map is DSB and ISB, which were previously
issued per-pte in __set_pte(). Since we are writing multiple ptes in a
given pte table, we can elide these barriers and insert them once we
have finished writing to the table.

Execution time of map_mem(), which creates the kernel linear map page
tables, was measured on different machines with different RAM configs:

| Apple M2 VM | Ampere Altra| Ampere Altra| Ampere Altra
| VM, 16G | VM, 64G | VM, 256G | Metal, 512G
---------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------
| ms (%) | ms (%) | ms (%) | ms (%)
---------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------
before | 78 (0%) | 435 (0%) | 1723 (0%) | 3779 (0%)
after | 11 (-86%) | 161 (-63%) | 656 (-62%) | 1654 (-56%)

Signed-off-by: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx>
Tested-by: Itaru Kitayama <itaru.kitayama@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Tested-by: Eric Chanudet <echanude@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@xxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@xxxxxxxxxx>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240412131908.433043-3-ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@xxxxxxxxxx>
[ Ryan: Trivial backport ]
Signed-off-by: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@xxxxxxx>
---
arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h | 7 ++++++-
arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c | 11 ++++++++++-
2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
index 62326f249aa71..3ea0c9768c4c9 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
+++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
@@ -261,9 +261,14 @@ static inline pte_t pte_mkdevmap(pte_t pte)
return set_pte_bit(pte, __pgprot(PTE_DEVMAP | PTE_SPECIAL));
}

-static inline void set_pte(pte_t *ptep, pte_t pte)
+static inline void set_pte_nosync(pte_t *ptep, pte_t pte)
{
WRITE_ONCE(*ptep, pte);
+}
+
+static inline void set_pte(pte_t *ptep, pte_t pte)
+{
+ set_pte_nosync(ptep, pte);

/*
* Only if the new pte is valid and kernel, otherwise TLB maintenance
diff --git a/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c b/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c
index b193ea2c0a629..ca06b5e131e0f 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c
@@ -175,7 +175,11 @@ static void init_pte(pte_t *ptep, unsigned long addr, unsigned long end,
do {
pte_t old_pte = READ_ONCE(*ptep);

- set_pte(ptep, pfn_pte(__phys_to_pfn(phys), prot));
+ /*
+ * Required barriers to make this visible to the table walker
+ * are deferred to the end of alloc_init_cont_pte().
+ */
+ set_pte_nosync(ptep, pfn_pte(__phys_to_pfn(phys), prot));

/*
* After the PTE entry has been populated once, we
@@ -229,6 +233,11 @@ static void alloc_init_cont_pte(pmd_t *pmdp, unsigned long addr,
phys += next - addr;
} while (addr = next, addr != end);

+ /*
+ * Note: barriers and maintenance necessary to clear the fixmap slot
+ * ensure that all previous pgtable writes are visible to the table
+ * walker.
+ */
pte_clear_fixmap();
}

--
2.43.0