Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of
mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old
CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem
replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually
become a complete replacement.
A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated
from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA
and DISCONTIG are often confused.
Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be
contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems,
where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory.
Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for
each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[]
to be chopped up.
In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page
is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables
sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the
page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the
number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the
page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to
occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of
memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the
number of used page->flags.
One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node
information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide
speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is
room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is
used.
This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where
there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM
often have to compile out the same areas of code.
Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com>
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Allow architectures to indicate that they will be providing hooks to indice
installed memory areas, memory_present(). Provide prototypes for the i386
implementation.
Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This gives DISCONTIGMEM a bit more help text to explain what it does, not just
when to choose it.
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
I got some feedback from users who think that the new "Memory Model" menu is a
little invasive. This patch will hide that menu, except when
CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL is enabled *or* when an individual architecture wants it.
An individual arch may want to enable it because they've removed their
arch-specific DISCONTIG prompt in favor of the mm/Kconfig one.
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
The following patch applies on top of 2.6.12-rc2-mm1. It fixes a minor
user interaction issue, and an early reference to SPARSEMEM.
This "choice" menu would always default to FLATMEM, as it was listed first.
Move it to the end so that the other defaults have a chance first.
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
There is some confusion that arose when working on SPARSEMEM patch between
what is needed for DISCONTIG vs. NUMA.
Multiple pg_data_t's are needed for DISCONTIGMEM or NUMA, independently.
All of the current NUMA implementations require an implementation of
DISCONTIG. Because of this, quite a lot of code which is really needed for
NUMA is actually under DISCONTIG #ifdefs. For SPARSEMEM, we changed some
of these #ifdefs to CONFIG_NUMA, but that broke the DISCONTIG=y and NUMA=n
case.
Introducing this new NEED_MULTIPLE_NODES config option allows code that is
needed for both NUMA or DISCONTIG to be separated out from code that is
specific to DISCONTIG.
One great advantage of this approach is that it doesn't require every
architecture to be converted over. All of the current implementations
should "just work", only the ones implementing SPARSEMEM will have to be
fixed up.
The change to free_area_init() makes it work inside, or out of the new
config option.
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
With sparsemem being introduced, we need a central place for new
memory-related .config options: mm/Kconfig. This allows us to remove many
of the duplicated arch-specific options.
The new option, CONFIG_FLATMEM, is there to enable us to detangle NUMA and
DISCONTIGMEM. This is a requirement for sparsemem because sparsemem uses
the NUMA code without the presence of DISCONTIGMEM. The sparsemem patches
use CONFIG_FLATMEM in generic code, so this patch is a requirement before
applying them.
Almost all places that used to do '#ifndef CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM' should use
'#ifdef CONFIG_FLATMEM' instead.
Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
