Re: [PATCH 3/4] ARM: drop CONFIG_HIGHPTE support

Linus Walleij
2024-12-11T14:31:39Z

On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 2:51 PM Russell King (Oracle)
<linux@armlinux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 02:32:51PM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 5:06 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > > From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> > >
> > > CONFIG_HIGHPTE was added in linux-2.6.32, a few years before 64-bit
> > > support. At the time it made sense, as the CONFIG_ARM_LPAE option allowed
> > > systems with 16GB of memory that made lowmem a particularly scarce
> > > resource, and the HIGHPTE implementation gave feature parity with 32-bit
> > > x86 and frv machines.
> > >
> > > Since Arm is the last architecture remaining that uses this, and almost
> > > no 32-bit machines support more than 4GB of RAM, the cost of continuing
> > > to maintain HIGHPTE seems unjustified, so remove it here to allow
> > > simplifying the generic page table handling.
> > >
> > > Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20241204103042.1904639-8-arnd@kernel.org/T/#u
> > > Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> >
> > I'm in favor of this if the x86 patch goes in. We need to get rid
> > of highmem anyway and this will need to happen sooner or later
> > either way.
>
> Well... I use highmem routinely.

Oh I don't mean we should get rid of it without any replacement. Certainly
systems with big physical memories need to be usable.

I am pursuing two ideas (inspired by Arnd and MM people):

1. The easy option - "densemem", on systems with a "hole" in the physical
memory making the 1:1 linear phys-to-virt map run out too soon and
overconsume virual memory, actually collect the physical memory on low
virtual addresses by elaborate phys-to-virt virt-to-phys and page
numbering that isn't 1:1.

2. The hard option - 4G-by-4G splitting, making the kernel and userspace
virtual memory spaces separate as it is in hardware on S/390, so the
kernel can use a while 4G of memory for its needs. I banged my head
against this a fair amount of time, so I might be incompetent to do it,
but I still try.

Yours,
Linus Walleij