Re: [PATCH v1 0/6] mm / virtio: Provide support for paravirtual waste page treatment

Alexander Duyck
2019-07-15T14:58:05Z

On Mon, 2019-07-15 at 11:41 +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 25.06.19 20:22, Dave Hansen wrote:
> > On 6/25/19 10:00 AM, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> > > Basically what we are doing is inflating the memory size we can report
> > > by inserting voids into the free memory areas. In my mind that matches
> > > up very well with what "aeration" is. It is similar to balloon in
> > > functionality, however instead of inflating the balloon we are
> > > inflating the free_list for higher order free areas by creating voids
> > > where the madvised pages were.
> >
> > OK, then call it "free page auto ballooning" or "auto ballooning" or
> > "allocator ballooning". s390 calls them "unused pages".
> >
> > Any of those things are clearer and more meaningful than "page aeration"
> > to me.
> >
>
> Alex, if you want to generalize the approach, and not call it "hinting",
> what about something similar to "page recycling".
>
> Would also fit the "waste" example and would be clearer - at least to
> me. Well, "bubble" does not apply anymore ...
>

I am fine with "page hinting". I have already gone through and started the
rename. The problem with "page recycling" is that is actually pretty
similar to the name we had in the networking space for how the NICs will
recycle the Rx buffers.

For now I am going through and replacing instances of Aerated with Hinted,
and aeration with page_hinting. I should have a new patch set ready in a
couple days assuming no unforeseen issues.

Thanks.

- Alex