Re: [RFC PATCH] mm/damon: add full LPAE support for memory monitoring above 4GB

[SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>]

Hi Ze,

On Tue, 8 Apr 2025 15:55:53 +0800 Ze Zuo <zuoze1@huawei.com> wrote:

> Previously, DAMON's physical address space monitoring only supported
> memory ranges below 4GB on LPAE-enabled systems. This was due to
> the use of 'unsigned long' in 'struct damon_addr_range', which is
> 32-bit on ARM32 even with LPAE enabled.

Nice finding!

> 
> This patch modifies the data types to properly support >4GB physical
> address spaces:
> 1. Changes 'start' and 'end' in 'struct damon_addr_range' from
>    'unsigned long' to 'unsigned long long' (u64)
> 2. Updates all related arithmetic operations and comparisons
> 3. Adjusts print formats from %lu to %llu where needed
> 4. Maintains backward compatibility for non-LPAE systems
> 
> Since the overhead of always using u64 is negligible on 32-bit systems,
> should we prefer this simplified approach over the conditional typedef?
> 
> Alternative implementation approaches to consider:
> 
> 1. Introduce damon_addr_t that adapts to CONFIG_PHYS_ADDR_T_64BIT
> 2. Convert all DAMON address operations to use this type
> 
> Just like implementation:
>  #ifdef CONFIG_PHYS_ADDR_T_64BIT
>     typedef unsigned long long damon_addr_t;
>  #else
>     typedef unsigned long damon_addr_t;
>  #endif
> 
> This method could potentially cause minor issues with print formatting
> and division operations. We'd appreciate any suggestions for better
> approaches. Thank you for your input.
> 
> The patch change allows DAMON to work with:
> - 32-bit ARM with LPAE (40-bit physical addresses)
> - 64-bit ARM systems
> - x86_64 physical address monitoring
> while preserving existing behavior on 32-bit systems without LPAE.

Again, nice finding and good improvement.  Thank you so much for sharing this
nice patch.

But, this doesn't seem like a very small and simple change.  I think we can
find the best approach together, by understanding impact of this change for
short term and long term.  For that, could you please also share how prevalent
32-bit ARM machines with LPAE are, and what would be your expected usage of
physical address space monitoring on such machines, in both short term and long
term?


Thanks,
SJ

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