Re: [PATCH 1/4] arch: consolidate existing CONFIG_PAGE_SIZE_*KB definitions

Arnd Bergmann
2024-02-27T15:43:11Z

On Mon, Feb 26, 2024, at 20:02, Christophe Leroy wrote:
> Le 26/02/2024 à 17:14, Arnd Bergmann a écrit :
>> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
>
> That's a nice re-factor.
>
> The only drawback I see is that we are loosing several interesting
> arch-specific comments/help text. Don't know if there could be an easy
> way to keep them.

This is what I have now, trying to write it as generic as
possible while still giving useful advice:

config PAGE_SIZE_4KB
bool "4KiB pages"
depends on HAVE_PAGE_SIZE_4KB
help
This option select the standard 4KiB Linux page size and the only
available option on many architectures. Using 4KiB page size will
minimize memory consumption and is therefore recommended for low
memory systems.
Some software that is written for x86 systems makes incorrect
assumptions about the page size and only runs on 4KiB pages.

config PAGE_SIZE_8KB
bool "8KiB pages"
depends on HAVE_PAGE_SIZE_8KB
help
This option is the only supported page size on a few older
processors, and can be slightly faster than 4KiB pages.

config PAGE_SIZE_16KB
bool "16KiB pages"
depends on HAVE_PAGE_SIZE_16KB
help
This option is usually a good compromise between memory
consumption and performance for typical desktop and server
workloads, often saving a level of page table lookups compared
to 4KB pages as well as reducing TLB pressure and overhead of
per-page operations in the kernel at the expense of a larger
page cache.

config PAGE_SIZE_32KB
bool "32KiB pages"
depends on HAVE_PAGE_SIZE_32KB
Using 32KiB page size will result in slightly higher performance
kernel at the price of higher memory consumption compared to
16KiB pages. This option is available only on cnMIPS cores.
Note that you will need a suitable Linux distribution to
support this.

config PAGE_SIZE_64KB
bool "64KiB pages"
depends on HAVE_PAGE_SIZE_64KB
Using 64KiB page size will result in slightly higher performance
kernel at the price of much higher memory consumption compared to
4KiB or 16KiB pages.
This is not suitable for general-purpose workloads but the
better performance may be worth the cost for certain types of
supercomputing or database applications that work mostly with
large in-memory data rather than small files.

config PAGE_SIZE_256KB
bool "256KiB pages"
depends on HAVE_PAGE_SIZE_256KB
help
256KB pages have little practical value due to their extreme
memory usage.

Let me know if you think some of this should be adapted further.

>>
>> +#define PAGE_SHIFT CONFIG_PAGE_SHIFT
>> #define PAGE_SIZE (1UL << PAGE_SHIFT)
>> #define PAGE_MASK (~((1 << PAGE_SHIFT) - 1))
>>
>
> Could we move PAGE_SIZE and PAGE_MASK in a generic/core header instead
> of having it duplicated for each arch ?

Yes, but I'm leaving this for a follow-up series, since I had
to stop somewhere and there is always room for cleanup up headers
further ;-)

Arnd