~/talk

Memory descriptors for DEVICE_PRIVATE memory

Talkat Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 · 2025-12-11..12-13
links:none on file
slides:none on file

Proposal to remove struct pages for DEVICE_PRIVATE/ZONE_DEVICE memory and replace PFNs with an index into a preallocated descriptor array accessed via a soft-leaf swap entry lookup. Claims: eliminates PFN-to-page special cases, cuts huge struct page allocation time (an 80 GB init took ~30s), and avoids stealing direct-map physical address space that breaks ARM64. Recent tooling: support for 2MB THP merged and refcount fixes. Expect smaller per-object metadata, single-mapping-only descriptors, and dynamic folios or plain descriptors instead of real struct pages.

AI-written summary · about

  1. 0:00Introduction to device private memory
  2. 2:31Progress and ref counting fixes
  3. 3:36Physical address space limitations
  4. 5:25Redesigning page metadata structure
  5. 8:14Eliminating PFN dependencies
  6. 10:20Exploring memory descriptors
  7. 14:20Summary and future directions
~/search
type to search 6,249 conferences, 138,987 speakers and 185,172 talks
~/help
cmdctrl k
search every conference, speaker and series
/
focus the filter search
h
home
c
conferences
s
speakers
e
series
t
light / dark — the status bar button does the same
?
this help
esc
close this, then clear every filter — or just the search, while you are typing in it

Ignored while you are typing. Pages without a filter rail have no search to focus.