From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2018 22:07:37 +0200 From: "joro@8bytes.org" To: "Kani, Toshi" Cc: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "bp@suse.de" , "tglx@linutronix.de" , "linux-mm@kvack.org" , "guohanjun@huawei.com" , "wxf.wang@hisilicon.com" , "stable@vger.kernel.org" , "x86@kernel.org" , "akpm@linux-foundation.org" , "willy@infradead.org" , "hpa@zytor.com" , "catalin.marinas@arm.com" , "mingo@redhat.com" , "will.deacon@arm.com" , "Hocko, Michal" , "cpandya@codeaurora.org" , "linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org" Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] x86/mm: implement free pmd/pte page interfaces Message-ID: <20180426200737.GS15462@8bytes.org> References: <20180314180155.19492-1-toshi.kani@hpe.com> <20180314180155.19492-3-toshi.kani@hpe.com> <20180426141926.GN15462@8bytes.org> <1524759629.2693.465.camel@hpe.com> <20180426172327.GQ15462@8bytes.org> <1524764948.2693.478.camel@hpe.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1524764948.2693.478.camel@hpe.com> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 05:49:58PM +0000, Kani, Toshi wrote: > On Thu, 2018-04-26 at 19:23 +0200, joro@8bytes.org wrote: > > So the PMD entry you clear can still be in a page-walk cache and this > > needs to be flushed too before you can free the PTE page. Otherwise > > page-walks might still go to the page you just freed. That is especially > > bad when the page is already reallocated and filled with other data. > > I do not understand why we need to flush processor caches here. x86 > processor caches are coherent with MESI. So, clearing an PMD entry > modifies a cache entry on the processor associated with the address, > which in turn invalidates all stale cache entries on other processors. A page walk cache is not about the processors data cache, its a cache similar to the TLB to speed up page-walks by caching intermediate results of previous page walks. Thanks, Joerg