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Re: [Xen-devel] [RFC PATCH] page_alloc: use first half of higher order chunks when halving



On 03/25/14 06:27, Matt Wilson wrote:
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 01:19:22PM +0100, Tim Deegan wrote:
At 13:22 +0200 on 25 Mar (1395750124), Matt Wilson wrote:
From: Matt Rushton <mrushton@xxxxxxxxxx>

This patch makes the Xen heap allocator use the first half of higher
order chunks instead of the second half when breaking them down for
smaller order allocations.

Linux currently remaps the memory overlapping PCI space one page at a
time. Before this change this resulted in the mfns being allocated in
reverse order and led to discontiguous dom0 memory. This forced dom0
to use bounce buffers for doing DMA and resulted in poor performance.
This seems like something better fixed on the dom0 side, by asking
explicitly for contiguous memory in cases where it makes a difference.
On the Xen side, this change seems harmless, but we might like to keep
the explicitly reversed allocation on debug builds, to flush out
guests that rely on their memory being contiguous.
Yes, I think that retaining the reverse allocation on debug builds is
fine. I'd like Konrad's take on if it's better or possible to fix this
on the Linux side.

I considered fixing it in Linux but this was a more straight forward change with no downside as far as I can tell. I see no reason in not fixing it in both places but this at least behaves more reasonably for one potential use case. I'm also interested in other opinions.


This change more gracefully handles the dom0 use case and returns
contiguous memory for subsequent allocations.

Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Keir Fraser <keir@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Tim Deegan <tim@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Matt Rushton <mrushton@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Matt Wilson <msw@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
  xen/common/page_alloc.c |    5 +++--
  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/xen/common/page_alloc.c b/xen/common/page_alloc.c
index 601319c..27e7f18 100644
--- a/xen/common/page_alloc.c
+++ b/xen/common/page_alloc.c
@@ -677,9 +677,10 @@ static struct page_info *alloc_heap_pages(
      /* We may have to halve the chunk a number of times. */
      while ( j != order )
      {
-        PFN_ORDER(pg) = --j;
+        struct page_info *pg2;
+        pg2 = pg + (1 << --j);
+        PFN_ORDER(pg) = j;
          page_list_add_tail(pg, &heap(node, zone, j));
-        pg += 1 << j;
AFAICT this uses the low half (pg) for the allocation _and_ puts it on
the freelist, and just leaks the high half (pg2).  Am I missing something?
Argh, oops. this is totally my fault (not Matt R.'s). I ported the
patch out of our development tree incorrectly. The code should have
read:

      while ( j != order )
      {
          struct page_info *pg2;

          pg2 = pg + (1 << --j);
          PFN_ORDER(pg2) = j;
          page_list_add_tail(pg2, &heap(node, zone, j));
      }

Apologies to Matt for my mangling of his patch (which also already had
the correct blank line per Andy's comment).

--msw

No worries I was about to correct you:)


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