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authorMike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2018-03-21 20:22:21 +0100
committerJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>2018-04-16 22:18:12 +0200
commiteeb8a6426ec04740058447b111db1c5fc455a4a0 (patch)
tree8b7eb15ffd6115558822cb8a0c7ea398eae2521d /Documentation/vm/highmem.txt
parentdocs/vm: frontswap.txt: convert to ReST format (diff)
downloadlinux-eeb8a6426ec04740058447b111db1c5fc455a4a0.tar.xz
linux-eeb8a6426ec04740058447b111db1c5fc455a4a0.zip
docs/vm: highmem.txt: convert to ReST format
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/highmem.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/vm/highmem.txt87
1 files changed, 36 insertions, 51 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/highmem.txt b/Documentation/vm/highmem.txt
index 4324d24ffacd..0f69a9fec34d 100644
--- a/Documentation/vm/highmem.txt
+++ b/Documentation/vm/highmem.txt
@@ -1,25 +1,14 @@
+.. _highmem:
- ====================
- HIGH MEMORY HANDLING
- ====================
+====================
+High Memory Handling
+====================
By: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
-Contents:
-
- (*) What is high memory?
-
- (*) Temporary virtual mappings.
-
- (*) Using kmap_atomic.
-
- (*) Cost of temporary mappings.
-
- (*) i386 PAE.
+.. contents:: :local:
-
-====================
-WHAT IS HIGH MEMORY?
+What Is High Memory?
====================
High memory (highmem) is used when the size of physical memory approaches or
@@ -38,7 +27,7 @@ kernel entry/exit. This means the available virtual memory space (4GiB on
i386) has to be divided between user and kernel space.
The traditional split for architectures using this approach is 3:1, 3GiB for
-userspace and the top 1GiB for kernel space:
+userspace and the top 1GiB for kernel space::
+--------+ 0xffffffff
| Kernel |
@@ -58,40 +47,38 @@ and user maps. Some hardware (like some ARMs), however, have limited virtual
space when they use mm context tags.
-==========================
-TEMPORARY VIRTUAL MAPPINGS
+Temporary Virtual Mappings
==========================
The kernel contains several ways of creating temporary mappings:
- (*) vmap(). This can be used to make a long duration mapping of multiple
- physical pages into a contiguous virtual space. It needs global
- synchronization to unmap.
+* vmap(). This can be used to make a long duration mapping of multiple
+ physical pages into a contiguous virtual space. It needs global
+ synchronization to unmap.
- (*) kmap(). This permits a short duration mapping of a single page. It needs
- global synchronization, but is amortized somewhat. It is also prone to
- deadlocks when using in a nested fashion, and so it is not recommended for
- new code.
+* kmap(). This permits a short duration mapping of a single page. It needs
+ global synchronization, but is amortized somewhat. It is also prone to
+ deadlocks when using in a nested fashion, and so it is not recommended for
+ new code.
- (*) kmap_atomic(). This permits a very short duration mapping of a single
- page. Since the mapping is restricted to the CPU that issued it, it
- performs well, but the issuing task is therefore required to stay on that
- CPU until it has finished, lest some other task displace its mappings.
+* kmap_atomic(). This permits a very short duration mapping of a single
+ page. Since the mapping is restricted to the CPU that issued it, it
+ performs well, but the issuing task is therefore required to stay on that
+ CPU until it has finished, lest some other task displace its mappings.
- kmap_atomic() may also be used by interrupt contexts, since it is does not
- sleep and the caller may not sleep until after kunmap_atomic() is called.
+ kmap_atomic() may also be used by interrupt contexts, since it is does not
+ sleep and the caller may not sleep until after kunmap_atomic() is called.
- It may be assumed that k[un]map_atomic() won't fail.
+ It may be assumed that k[un]map_atomic() won't fail.
-=================
-USING KMAP_ATOMIC
+Using kmap_atomic
=================
When and where to use kmap_atomic() is straightforward. It is used when code
wants to access the contents of a page that might be allocated from high memory
(see __GFP_HIGHMEM), for example a page in the pagecache. The API has two
-functions, and they can be used in a manner similar to the following:
+functions, and they can be used in a manner similar to the following::
/* Find the page of interest. */
struct page *page = find_get_page(mapping, offset);
@@ -109,7 +96,7 @@ Note that the kunmap_atomic() call takes the result of the kmap_atomic() call
not the argument.
If you need to map two pages because you want to copy from one page to
-another you need to keep the kmap_atomic calls strictly nested, like:
+another you need to keep the kmap_atomic calls strictly nested, like::
vaddr1 = kmap_atomic(page1);
vaddr2 = kmap_atomic(page2);
@@ -120,8 +107,7 @@ another you need to keep the kmap_atomic calls strictly nested, like:
kunmap_atomic(vaddr1);
-==========================
-COST OF TEMPORARY MAPPINGS
+Cost of Temporary Mappings
==========================
The cost of creating temporary mappings can be quite high. The arch has to
@@ -136,25 +122,24 @@ If CONFIG_MMU is not set, then there can be no temporary mappings and no
highmem. In such a case, the arithmetic approach will also be used.
-========
i386 PAE
========
The i386 arch, under some circumstances, will permit you to stick up to 64GiB
of RAM into your 32-bit machine. This has a number of consequences:
- (*) Linux needs a page-frame structure for each page in the system and the
- pageframes need to live in the permanent mapping, which means:
+* Linux needs a page-frame structure for each page in the system and the
+ pageframes need to live in the permanent mapping, which means:
- (*) you can have 896M/sizeof(struct page) page-frames at most; with struct
- page being 32-bytes that would end up being something in the order of 112G
- worth of pages; the kernel, however, needs to store more than just
- page-frames in that memory...
+* you can have 896M/sizeof(struct page) page-frames at most; with struct
+ page being 32-bytes that would end up being something in the order of 112G
+ worth of pages; the kernel, however, needs to store more than just
+ page-frames in that memory...
- (*) PAE makes your page tables larger - which slows the system down as more
- data has to be accessed to traverse in TLB fills and the like. One
- advantage is that PAE has more PTE bits and can provide advanced features
- like NX and PAT.
+* PAE makes your page tables larger - which slows the system down as more
+ data has to be accessed to traverse in TLB fills and the like. One
+ advantage is that PAE has more PTE bits and can provide advanced features
+ like NX and PAT.
The general recommendation is that you don't use more than 8GiB on a 32-bit
machine - although more might work for you and your workload, you're pretty