Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] mm: support zswap-backed anonymous large folio swapin

[David Hildenbrand (Arm)]

On 5/12/26 00:13, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> On Fri, May 08, 2026 at 08:18:29PM +0000, fujunjie wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This RFC explores anonymous large folio swapin when a contiguous swap
>> range is backed consistently by zswap.
>>
>> Large folio swapout to zswap is already supported by storing each base
>> page in the folio as a separate zswap entry. The anonymous synchronous
>> swapin path has remained order-0 once zswap has ever been enabled:
>> zswap_load() rejected large folios, and alloc_swap_folio() avoided large
>> folio allocation to protect against mixed backend ranges.
>>
>> This RFC keeps the scope intentionally conservative. It does not try to
>> read one large folio from mixed zswap and disk backends, and it does not
>> change shmem swapin. Shmem still has its existing zswap fallback and is
>> left for later discussion. For anonymous swapin, the backend rule is made
>> explicit:
>>
>> - a range fully absent from zswap can keep using the disk backend
>> - a range fully present in zswap can be decompressed into a large folio
>> - a mixed zswap/non-zswap range falls back to order-0 swapin
>>
>> The series adds a zswap range query helper, teaches zswap_load() to
>> decompress all-zswap large folios one base page at a time, accounts mTHP
>> swpin for zswap-loaded large folios, retries synchronous large-folio
>> insertion races with order-0 swapin, and removes the anonymous
>> zswap-never-enabled restriction once mixed ranges are filtered.
>>
>> I tested the series with a full bzImage build using CONFIG_ZSWAP=y,
>> CONFIG_ZRAM=y, CONFIG_MEMCG=y and CONFIG_THP_SWAP=y.
>>
>> The QEMU/KVM runs covered both the fully-zswap path and the mixed-backend
>> fallback path. In the all-zswap run, a 512MiB anonymous mapping was faulted
>> as 8192 64KiB groups, reclaimed into zswap, and faulted back. Reclaim
>> reported mthp64_zswpout=8192 and zswpout=131072. Refault then reported
>> mthp64_swpin=8192 and zswpin=131072, and pagemap/kpageflags showed 8192
>> order-4 THP groups in the mapping.
>>
>> In the mixed-backend run, the workload used a 64MiB anonymous mapping
>> split into 1024 64KiB groups. After shrinker debugfs wrote back exactly
>> one zswap base-page entry, refault left 1023 order-4 THP groups and one
>> order-0 mixed group. The kernel stats matched that shape:
>> mthp64_swpin=1023, zswpin=16383 and zswpwb=1.
>>
>> CONFIG_SHRINKER_DEBUG is only a test aid for making that one zswap
>> writeback deterministic; it is not required by the implementation.
>>
>> Nhat Pham's active Virtual Swap Space series is adjacent work. It moves
>> swap cache and zswap entry state into a virtual swap descriptor, and lists
>> mixed backing THP swapin as a future use case. This RFC is independent and
>> works with the current swap/zswap infrastructure, but may need rebasing if
>> VSS lands first.
>>
>> Feedback would be especially helpful on:
>>
>> 1. whether it makes sense to support all-zswap large folio swapin first,
>>    while keeping mixed zswap/disk ranges on the order-0 fallback path
> 
> I think so, yes, but based on my read of the code this RFC only affects
> synchornous swapin, which is more-or-less zram+zswap. This is an
> uncommon setup outside of testing.

BLK_FEAT_SYNCHRONOUS is also set for pmem and brd devices I think, but that's
also pretty uncommon I assume. Well, maybe if your hypervisor provides you with
an emulated NVDIMM to use as swap backend ... maybe.

I thought there were other ways to get BLK_FEAT_SYNCHRONOUS set, but I don't see
other usage.

So seeing it for zswap is pretty rare I assume.

-- 
Cheers,

David