Re: [patch 0/4] ia64 SPARSEMEM

Yasunori Goto
2005-05-27T05:14:12Z

Hello. Jack-san.

> > > a smaller number ... his banks of memory all start on 4G boundaries,
>
> All banks (currently) start on 16GB boundaries. I don't think it
> matters, but directory memory occupies the last 1/32 of each DIMM. This
> means that memory blocks are slightly smaller than you might expect. The
> bios marks the directory memory as "unavailable".

Then, I don't think section size must be same with
its directory memory size. When pages are registered by __free_pages(),
kernel distinguish RAM from the areas for firmware
(ex, page_is_ram()) before free, firmware page become reserved page,
and kernel doesn't use it.
If you make a code that kernel asks its BIOS, the status of directory
memory pages will be reserved. I think section size can be 16GB
for your case.

Thanks.
--
Yasunori Goto