[RFC 00/20] TLB batching consolidation and enhancements

[Nadav Amit]

> On Jan 30, 2021, at 11:57 PM, Nadav Amit <namit at vmware.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 30, 2021, at 7:30 PM, Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Excerpts from Nadav Amit's message of January 31, 2021 10:11 am:
>>> From: Nadav Amit <namit at vmware.com>
>>> 
>>> There are currently (at least?) 5 different TLB batching schemes in the
>>> kernel:
>>> 
>>> 1. Using mmu_gather (e.g., zap_page_range()).
>>> 
>>> 2. Using {inc|dec}_tlb_flush_pending() to inform other threads on the
>>>  ongoing deferred TLB flush and flushing the entire range eventually
>>>  (e.g., change_protection_range()).
>>> 
>>> 3. arch_{enter|leave}_lazy_mmu_mode() for sparc and powerpc (and Xen?).
>>> 
>>> 4. Batching per-table flushes (move_ptes()).
>>> 
>>> 5. By setting a flag on that a deferred TLB flush operation takes place,
>>>  flushing when (try_to_unmap_one() on x86).
>>> 
>>> It seems that (1)-(4) can be consolidated. In addition, it seems that
>>> (5) is racy. It also seems there can be many redundant TLB flushes, and
>>> potentially TLB-shootdown storms, for instance during batched
>>> reclamation (using try_to_unmap_one()) if at the same time mmu_gather
>>> defers TLB flushes.
>>> 
>>> More aggressive TLB batching may be possible, but this patch-set does
>>> not add such batching. The proposed changes would enable such batching
>>> in a later time.
>>> 
>>> Admittedly, I do not understand how things are not broken today, which
>>> frightens me to make further batching before getting things in order.
>>> For instance, why is ok for zap_pte_range() to batch dirty-PTE flushes
>>> for each page-table (but not in greater granularity). Can't
>>> ClearPageDirty() be called before the flush, causing writes after
>>> ClearPageDirty() and before the flush to be lost?
>> 
>> Because it's holding the page table lock which stops page_mkclean from 
>> cleaning the page. Or am I misunderstanding the question?
> 
> Thanks. I understood this part. Looking again at the code, I now understand
> my confusion: I forgot that the reverse mapping is removed after the PTE is
> zapped.
> 
> Makes me wonder whether it is ok to defer the TLB flush to tlb_finish_mmu(),
> by performing set_page_dirty() for the batched pages when needed in
> tlb_finish_mmu() [ i.e., by marking for each batched page whether
> set_page_dirty() should be issued for that page while collecting them ].

Correcting myself (I hope): no we cannot do so, since the buffers might be
remove from the page at that point.