1 Commits (641c767389b19859a45e6de46d8e18cd935bdb60)

Author	SHA1	Message	Date
Andy Whitcroft	d41dee369b	[PATCH] sparsemem memory model ... 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>	20 years ago