Re: 32-bit HIGHMEM and game console downstreams

Ash Logan
2025-09-16T01:57:12Z

On 13/9/25 23:52, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

Hi Arnd! Thanks for your reply.

> Like most other machines, this one is probably fine with a combination
> of a custom LOWMEM_SIZE setting and using zram-highmem, even if we
> end up removing support for highmem page cache.

Good shout - I'm now testing a 2G/2G split which allows for 1536MiB
lowmem. I know that's a somewhat aggressive setting for userspace, so
we'll see if anything breaks. I read Rasbian shipped similar kernels and
had issues with Wine, though that's not a common use case on PowerPC ^^

> The smaller devices are probable getting problematic sooner, 96MB
> in the Wii is already really tight and this only gets worse over
> time.

The maintainer of that downstream claims to be able to boot modern
text-mode distros on the GameCube' 24MB, which I find really impressive!

> Just to be clear: there is no general 32-bit deprecation going on. When
> I talked about phasing out 32-bit platforms over time, that is purely
> going to be those that have no users left, or the few ones that are
> causing more work than they are worth. E.g. The ppc405 ones got
> removed recently (after many years of discussion) because they were
> making ppc440 maintenance harder and had no known users.
>
> Highmem does get in the way, but unless more -mm folks make a strong
> argument in favor of removing it all, it's more likely that we'll
> go with Willy's suggestion of keeping highmem on page cache (anon
> and file mappings) than just keeling zram, and even that would
> still work.

That's good to hear. I would like to have the page cache, though I'm
still going to try and maximise lowmem as well.

Thanks,
Ash