Re: [PATCH v10 00/13] khugepaged: mTHP support

David Hildenbrand
2025-09-02T11:03:13Z

On 02.09.25 12:34, Usama Arif wrote:
>
>
> On 02/09/2025 10:03, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 02.09.25 04:28, Baolin Wang wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2025/9/2 00:46, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> On 29.08.25 03:55, Baolin Wang wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2025/8/28 18:48, Dev Jain wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 28/08/25 3:16 pm, Baolin Wang wrote:
>>>>>>> (Sorry for chiming in late)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 2025/8/22 22:10, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> Once could also easily support the value 255 (HPAGE_PMD_NR / 2- 1),
>>>>>>>>>> but not sure
>>>>>>>>>> if we have to add that for now.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Yeah not so sure about this, this is a 'just have to know' too, and
>>>>>>>>> yes you
>>>>>>>>> might add it to the docs, but people are going to be mightily
>>>>>>>>> confused, esp if
>>>>>>>>> it's a calculated value.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I don't see any other way around having a separate tunable if we
>>>>>>>>> don't just have
>>>>>>>>> something VERY simple like on/off.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yeah, not advocating that we add support for other values than 0/511,
>>>>>>>> really.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Also the mentioned issue sounds like something that needs to be
>>>>>>>>> fixed elsewhere
>>>>>>>>> honestly in the algorithm used to figure out mTHP ranges (I may be
>>>>>>>>> wrong - and
>>>>>>>>> happy to stand corrected if this is somehow inherent, but reallly
>>>>>>>>> feels that
>>>>>>>>> way).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think the creep is unavoidable for certain values.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If you have the first two pages of a PMD area populated, and you
>>>>>>>> allow for at least half of the #PTEs to be non/zero, you'd collapse
>>>>>>>> first a
>>>>>>>> order-2 folio, then and order-3 ... until you reached PMD order.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So for now we really should just support 0 / 511 to say "don't
>>>>>>>> collapse if there are holes" vs. "always collapse if there is at
>>>>>>>> least one pte used".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If we only allow setting 0 or 511, as Nico mentioned before, "At 511,
>>>>>>> no mTHP collapses would ever occur anyway, unless you have 2MB
>>>>>>> disabled and other mTHP sizes enabled. Technically, at 511, only the
>>>>>>> highest enabled order would ever be collapsed."
>>>>>> I didn't understand this statement. At 511, mTHP collapses will occur if
>>>>>> khugepaged cannot get a PMD folio. Our goal is to collapse to the
>>>>>> highest order folio.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, I’m not saying that it’s incorrect behavior when set to 511. What I
>>>>> mean is, as in the example I gave below, users may only want to allow a
>>>>> large order collapse when the number of present PTEs reaches half of the
>>>>> large folio, in order to avoid RSS bloat.
>>>>
>>>> How do these users control allocation at fault time where this parameter
>>>> is completely ignored?
>>>
>>> Sorry, I did not get your point. Why does the 'max_pte_none' need to
>>> control allocation at fault time? Could you be more specific? Thanks.
>>
>> The comment over khugepaged_max_ptes_none gives a hint:
>>
>> /*
>>  * default collapse hugepages if there is at least one pte mapped like
>>  * it would have happened if the vma was large enough during page
>>  * fault.
>>  *
>>  * Note that these are only respected if collapse was initiated by khugepaged.
>>  */
>>
>> In the common case (for anything that really cares about RSS bloat) you will just a
>> get a THP during page fault and consequently RSS bloat.
>>
>> As raised in my other reply, the only documented reason to set max_ptes_none=0 seems
>> to be when an application later (after once possibly getting a THP already during
>> page faults) did some MADV_DONTNEED and wants to control the usage of THPs itself using
>> MADV_COLLAPSE.
>>
>> It's a questionable use case, that already got more problematic with mTHP and page
>> table reclaim.
>>
>> Let me explain:
>>
>> Before mTHP, if someone would MADV_DONTNEED (resulting in
>> a page table with at least one pte_none entry), there would have been no way we would
>> get memory over-allocated afterwards with max_ptes_none=0.
>>
>> (1) Page faults would spot "there is a page table" and just fallback to order-0 pages.
>> (2) khugepaged was told to not collapse through max_ptes_none=0.
>>
>> But now:
>>
>> (A) With mTHP during page-faults, we can just end up over-allocating memory in such
>>     an area again: page faults will simply spot a bunch of pte_nones around the fault area
>>     and install an mTHP.
>>
>> (B) With page table reclaim (when zapping all PTEs in a table at once), we will reclaim the
>>     page table. The next page fault will just try installing a PMD THP again, because there is
>>     no PTE table anymore.
>>
>> So I question the utility of max_ptes_none. If you can't tame page faults, then there is only
>> limited sense in taming khugepaged. I think there is vale in setting max_ptes_none=0 for some
>> corner cases, but I am yet to learn why max_ptes_none=123 would make any sense.
>>
>>
>
> For PMD mapped THPs with THP shrinker, this has changed. You can basically tame pagefaults, as when you encounter
> memory pressure, the shrinker kicks in if the value is less than HPAGE_PMD_NR -1 (i.e. 511 for x86), and
> will break down those hugepages and free up zero-filled memory.

You are not really taming page faults, though, you are undoing what page
faults might have messed up :)

I have seen in our prod workloads where
> the memory usage and THP usage can spike (usually when the workload starts), but with memory pressure,
> the memory usage is lower compared to with max_ptes_none = 511, while still still keeping the benefits
> of THPs like lower TLB misses.

Thanks for raising that: I think the current behavior is in place such
that you don't bounce back-and-forth between khugepaged collapse and
shrinker-split.

There are likely other ways to achieve that, when we have in mind that
the thp shrinker will install zero pages and max_ptes_none includes
zero pages.

>
> I do agree that the value of max_ptes_none is magical and different workloads can react very differently
> to it. The relationship is definitely not linear. i.e. if I use max_ptes_none = 256, it does not mean
> that the memory regression of using THP=always vs THP=madvise is halved.

To which value would you set it? Just 510? 0?

--
Cheers

David / dhildenb