mm/vmalloc.c: enhance vm_map_ram() comment
vm_map_ram() has a fragmentation problem when it cannot purge a
chunk(ie, 4M address space) if there is a pinning object in that
addresss space. So it could consume all VMALLOC address space easily.
We can fix the fragmentation problem by using vmap instead of
vm_map_ram() but vmap() is known to be slow compared to vm_map_ram().
Minchan said vm_map_ram is 5 times faster than vmap in his tests. So I
thought we should fix fragment problem of vm_map_ram because our
proprietary GPU driver has used it heavily.
On second thought, it's not an easy because we should reuse freed space
for solving the problem and it could make more IPI and bitmap operation
for searching hole. It could mitigate API's goal which is very fast
mapping. And even fragmentation problem wouldn't show in 64 bit
machine.
Another option is that the user should separate long-life and short-life
object and use vmap for long-life but vm_map_ram for short-life. If we
inform the user about the characteristic of vm_map_ram the user can
choose one according to the page lifetime.
Let's add some notice messages to user.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: tweak comment text]
Signed-off-by: Gioh Kim <gioh.kim@lge.com>
Reviewed-by: Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
1 file changed