Re: [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC] 64k (or 16k) base page size on x86

From: Peter Zijlstra

Date: Thu Feb 19 2026 - 10:21:14 EST


On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 04:17:29PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 03:08:51PM +0000, Kiryl Shutsemau wrote:
> > No, there's no new hardware (that I know of). I want to explore what page size
> > means.
> >
> > The kernel uses the same value - PAGE_SIZE - for two things:
> >
> > - the order-0 buddy allocation size;
> >
> > - the granularity of virtual address space mapping;
> >
> > I think we can benefit from separating these two meanings and allowing
> > order-0 allocations to be larger than the virtual address space covered by a
> > PTE entry.
>
> Didn't AA do this a decade ago or somesuch?

https://lwn.net/Articles/240914/