mm/hugetlb_vmemmap: move comment block to Documentation/vm

In preparation for device-dax for using hugetlbfs compound page tail
deduplication technique, move the comment block explanation into a common
place in Documentation/vm.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220420155310.9712-4-joao.m.martins@oracle.com
Signed-off-by: Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>
Reviewed-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Suggested-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>
Cc: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Jane Chu <jane.chu@oracle.com>
Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Vishal Verma <vishal.l.verma@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

2 files changed, 174 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/vm/index.rst b/Documentation/vm/index.rst
index 44365c4574a3..2fb612bb72c9 100644
--- a/Documentation/vm/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/vm/index.rst
@@ -37,5 +37,6 @@ algorithms.  If you are looking for advice on simply allocating memory, see the
    transhuge
    unevictable-lru
    vmalloced-kernel-stacks
+   vmemmap_dedup
    z3fold
    zsmalloc
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/vmemmap_dedup.rst b/Documentation/vm/vmemmap_dedup.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..485ccf4f7b10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/vm/vmemmap_dedup.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==================================
+Free some vmemmap pages of HugeTLB
+==================================
+
+The struct page structures (page structs) are used to describe a physical
+page frame. By default, there is a one-to-one mapping from a page frame to
+it's corresponding page struct.
+
+HugeTLB pages consist of multiple base page size pages and is supported by many
+architectures. See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst for more
+details. On the x86-64 architecture, HugeTLB pages of size 2MB and 1GB are
+currently supported. Since the base page size on x86 is 4KB, a 2MB HugeTLB page
+consists of 512 base pages and a 1GB HugeTLB page consists of 4096 base pages.
+For each base page, there is a corresponding page struct.
+
+Within the HugeTLB subsystem, only the first 4 page structs are used to
+contain unique information about a HugeTLB page. __NR_USED_SUBPAGE provides
+this upper limit. The only 'useful' information in the remaining page structs
+is the compound_head field, and this field is the same for all tail pages.
+
+By removing redundant page structs for HugeTLB pages, memory can be returned
+to the buddy allocator for other uses.
+
+Different architectures support different HugeTLB pages. For example, the
+following table is the HugeTLB page size supported by x86 and arm64
+architectures. Because arm64 supports 4k, 16k, and 64k base pages and
+supports contiguous entries, so it supports many kinds of sizes of HugeTLB
+page.
+
++--------------+-----------+-----------------------------------------------+
+| Architecture | Page Size |                HugeTLB Page Size              |
++--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+|    x86-64    |    4KB    |    2MB    |    1GB    |           |           |
++--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+|              |    4KB    |   64KB    |    2MB    |    32MB   |    1GB    |
+|              +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+|    arm64     |   16KB    |    2MB    |   32MB    |     1GB   |           |
+|              +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+|              |   64KB    |    2MB    |  512MB    |    16GB   |           |
++--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+
+When the system boot up, every HugeTLB page has more than one struct page
+structs which size is (unit: pages)::
+
+   struct_size = HugeTLB_Size / PAGE_SIZE * sizeof(struct page) / PAGE_SIZE
+
+Where HugeTLB_Size is the size of the HugeTLB page. We know that the size
+of the HugeTLB page is always n times PAGE_SIZE. So we can get the following
+relationship::
+
+   HugeTLB_Size = n * PAGE_SIZE
+
+Then::
+
+   struct_size = n * PAGE_SIZE / PAGE_SIZE * sizeof(struct page) / PAGE_SIZE
+               = n * sizeof(struct page) / PAGE_SIZE
+
+We can use huge mapping at the pud/pmd level for the HugeTLB page.
+
+For the HugeTLB page of the pmd level mapping, then::
+
+   struct_size = n * sizeof(struct page) / PAGE_SIZE
+               = PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(pte_t) * sizeof(struct page) / PAGE_SIZE
+               = sizeof(struct page) / sizeof(pte_t)
+               = 64 / 8
+               = 8 (pages)
+
+Where n is how many pte entries which one page can contains. So the value of
+n is (PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(pte_t)).
+
+This optimization only supports 64-bit system, so the value of sizeof(pte_t)
+is 8. And this optimization also applicable only when the size of struct page
+is a power of two. In most cases, the size of struct page is 64 bytes (e.g.
+x86-64 and arm64). So if we use pmd level mapping for a HugeTLB page, the
+size of struct page structs of it is 8 page frames which size depends on the
+size of the base page.
+
+For the HugeTLB page of the pud level mapping, then::
+
+   struct_size = PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(pmd_t) * struct_size(pmd)
+               = PAGE_SIZE / 8 * 8 (pages)
+               = PAGE_SIZE (pages)
+
+Where the struct_size(pmd) is the size of the struct page structs of a
+HugeTLB page of the pmd level mapping.
+
+E.g.: A 2MB HugeTLB page on x86_64 consists in 8 page frames while 1GB
+HugeTLB page consists in 4096.
+
+Next, we take the pmd level mapping of the HugeTLB page as an example to
+show the internal implementation of this optimization. There are 8 pages
+struct page structs associated with a HugeTLB page which is pmd mapped.
+
+Here is how things look before optimization::
+
+    HugeTLB                  struct pages(8 pages)         page frame(8 pages)
+ +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+   mapping to   +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     0     | -------------> |     0     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     1     | -------------> |     1     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     2     | -------------> |     2     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     3     | -------------> |     3     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     4     | -------------> |     4     |
+ |    PMD    |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |   level   |                     |     5     | -------------> |     5     |
+ |  mapping  |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     6     | -------------> |     6     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     7     | -------------> |     7     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |
+ |           |
+ |           |
+ +-----------+
+
+The value of page->compound_head is the same for all tail pages. The first
+page of page structs (page 0) associated with the HugeTLB page contains the 4
+page structs necessary to describe the HugeTLB. The only use of the remaining
+pages of page structs (page 1 to page 7) is to point to page->compound_head.
+Therefore, we can remap pages 1 to 7 to page 0. Only 1 page of page structs
+will be used for each HugeTLB page. This will allow us to free the remaining
+7 pages to the buddy allocator.
+
+Here is how things look after remapping::
+
+    HugeTLB                  struct pages(8 pages)         page frame(8 pages)
+ +-----------+ ---virt_to_page---> +-----------+   mapping to   +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     0     | -------------> |     0     |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                +-----------+
+ |           |                     |     1     | ---------------^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
+ |           |                     +-----------+                  | | | | | |
+ |           |                     |     2     | -----------------+ | | | | |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                    | | | | |
+ |           |                     |     3     | -------------------+ | | | |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                      | | | |
+ |           |                     |     4     | ---------------------+ | | |
+ |    PMD    |                     +-----------+                        | | |
+ |   level   |                     |     5     | -----------------------+ | |
+ |  mapping  |                     +-----------+                          | |
+ |           |                     |     6     | -------------------------+ |
+ |           |                     +-----------+                            |
+ |           |                     |     7     | ---------------------------+
+ |           |                     +-----------+
+ |           |
+ |           |
+ |           |
+ +-----------+
+
+When a HugeTLB is freed to the buddy system, we should allocate 7 pages for
+vmemmap pages and restore the previous mapping relationship.
+
+For the HugeTLB page of the pud level mapping. It is similar to the former.
+We also can use this approach to free (PAGE_SIZE - 1) vmemmap pages.
+
+Apart from the HugeTLB page of the pmd/pud level mapping, some architectures
+(e.g. aarch64) provides a contiguous bit in the translation table entries
+that hints to the MMU to indicate that it is one of a contiguous set of
+entries that can be cached in a single TLB entry.
+
+The contiguous bit is used to increase the mapping size at the pmd and pte
+(last) level. So this type of HugeTLB page can be optimized only when its
+size of the struct page structs is greater than 1 page.
+
+Notice: The head vmemmap page is not freed to the buddy allocator and all
+tail vmemmap pages are mapped to the head vmemmap page frame. So we can see
+more than one struct page struct with PG_head (e.g. 8 per 2 MB HugeTLB page)
+associated with each HugeTLB page. The compound_head() can handle this
+correctly (more details refer to the comment above compound_head()).