Re: [RFC] mm: restrict zero-page remapping to underused THP splits

[Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev>]

On 11/05/2026 07:36, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> 
>>>
>>> I tend to like (2), and maybe (3) on top. Opinions?
>>>
>>
>> Hello!
> 
> 
> Hi!
> 
>>
>> I think (3) definitely makes sense.
>>
>> I have not had a deep look at KSM up until just now, so might be dumb
>> to say all of below.. :)
>>
>> What I see is that KSM scans THPs as 512 individual 4K subpages and splits the
>> THP whenever it actually wants to merge a single 4K chunk. That seems like a
>> lot of work for a single 4K?
> 
> Yes, but that's what the users ask for: if there is a chance to deduplicate
> memory, it shall be deduplicated asap.
> 
>>
>> One thing that came to my mind is to have a separate tree for THPs and only
>> merge the THPs that have the same content, but the possibility of encoutering
>> 2M pages with same content is extremely low? so this is probably a bad idea.
> 
> Right, the probability is low, and it would change existing semantics, breaking
> existing users.
> 
> In addition, we would have to add large folio support for KSM, which I rather
> would avoid.
> 
>>
>> An alternative is, does it even make sense to process and split THPs by KSM
>> in the way it works now? IMO this is a lot of work for a single 4K merge.
>> Shrinker is designed to release memory when its needed, i.e. reclaim, at
>> which point IMO free memory is more important than performance. But KSM runs
>> all the time.. so constantly splitting THPs everytime a single 4K can be
>> merged just hurts performance all the time.
> 
> Right, but that's what you get with KSM: bad performance if there is a chance to
> deduplicate :)
> 
> (and bad performance from scanning overhead)
> 
>> If someone cares about memory,
>> they should be running the shrinker.
> 
> It's not just the zero page, but really any page content. The zero page is
> currently only "special" after we added conditional support to deduplicate to
> the shared zeropage in KSM. The shrinker doesn't help for any other page content
> besides zero-filled.
> 
> Further, the shrinker is something system-wide, whereby KSM is usually only
> enabled for selected VMAs (with some exceptions nowadays).
> 
> Also note that KSM deduplicates independent of the folio size: not just THPs,
> but really any (large) folio. Yes, it splits large folios, but that's really
> just to keep the T in THP.
> 
>> Is a better alternative that KSM skips
>> THPs, THP shrinker splits THPs into 4K subpages when memory is needed, and
>> only then KSM gets those 4K subpages?
>>
>> Above sounds like reworking KSM, but just wanted to put it out there.
> 
> Right, and it makes KSM more THP aware. Which is something I would avoid right now.
> 
>>
>> (2) + (3) sounds like a good solution, but I wonder if above alternative
>> of KSM just skipping THPs might be better?
> 
> That would change the semantics where, for example, where we expect that memory
> was deduplicated after a KSM run.
> 
> VMs (where KSM is usually employed) are expected to be mostly backed by THPs:
> except where we can deduplicate memory. Skipping THPs would essentially break
> the main use case for KSM :)
> 
> Does that make sense?
> 

Yes, all of above makes sense. But I feel like this means someone should not
set THP policy to always and enable KSM together. In general I feel like KSM
is not something that should be run on big servers, as hopefully you are
not managing memory as 4K chunks for big machines and using a lot of THPs.