[PATCH RFC v3 04/19] mm: use folio_zero_user for user pages in post_alloc_hook

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

When post_alloc_hook() needs to zero a page for an explicit
__GFP_ZERO allocation and user_addr is set, use folio_zero_user()
instead of kernel_init_pages().  This zeros near the faulting
address last, keeping those cachelines hot for the impending
user access.

folio_zero_user() is only used for explicit __GFP_ZERO, not for
init_on_alloc.  On architectures with virtually-indexed caches
(e.g., ARM), clear_user_highpage() performs per-line cache
operations; using it for init_on_alloc would add overhead that
kernel_init_pages() avoids (the page fault path flushes the
cache at PTE installation time regardless).

No functional change yet: current callers do not pass __GFP_ZERO
for user pages (they zero at the callsite instead).  Subsequent
patches will convert them.

Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@xxxxxxxxxx>
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-6
---
 mm/page_alloc.c | 17 ++++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 99c01eb2d59e..db2192ffc27c 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -1882,9 +1882,20 @@ inline void post_alloc_hook(struct page *page, unsigned int order,
 		for (i = 0; i != 1 << order; ++i)
 			page_kasan_tag_reset(page + i);
 	}
-	/* If memory is still not initialized, initialize it now. */
-	if (init)
-		kernel_init_pages(page, 1 << order);
+	/*
+	 * If memory is still not initialized, initialize it now.
+	 * When __GFP_ZERO was explicitly requested and user_addr is set,
+	 * use folio_zero_user() which zeros near the faulting address
+	 * last, keeping those cachelines hot.  For init_on_alloc, use
+	 * kernel_init_pages() to avoid unnecessary cache flush overhead
+	 * on architectures with virtually-indexed caches.
+	 */
+	if (init) {
+		if ((gfp_flags & __GFP_ZERO) && user_addr != USER_ADDR_NONE)
+			folio_zero_user(page_folio(page), user_addr);
+		else
+			kernel_init_pages(page, 1 << order);
+	}
 
 	set_page_owner(page, order, gfp_flags);
 	page_table_check_alloc(page, order);
-- 
MST