Adding upstream version 6.1.76.upstream/6.1.76upstream

Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>

1 files changed, 87 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/mm/ksm.rst b/Documentation/mm/ksm.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f83cfbc12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/mm/ksm.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+.. _ksm:
+
+=======================
+Kernel Samepage Merging
+=======================
+
+KSM is a memory-saving de-duplication feature, enabled by CONFIG_KSM=y,
+added to the Linux kernel in 2.6.32.  See ``mm/ksm.c`` for its implementation,
+and http://lwn.net/Articles/306704/ and https://lwn.net/Articles/330589/
+
+The userspace interface of KSM is described in :ref:`Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst <admin_guide_ksm>`
+
+Design
+======
+
+Overview
+--------
+
+.. kernel-doc:: mm/ksm.c
+   :DOC: Overview
+
+Reverse mapping
+---------------
+KSM maintains reverse mapping information for KSM pages in the stable
+tree.
+
+If a KSM page is shared between less than ``max_page_sharing`` VMAs,
+the node of the stable tree that represents such KSM page points to a
+list of struct ksm_rmap_item and the ``page->mapping`` of the
+KSM page points to the stable tree node.
+
+When the sharing passes this threshold, KSM adds a second dimension to
+the stable tree. The tree node becomes a "chain" that links one or
+more "dups". Each "dup" keeps reverse mapping information for a KSM
+page with ``page->mapping`` pointing to that "dup".
+
+Every "chain" and all "dups" linked into a "chain" enforce the
+invariant that they represent the same write protected memory content,
+even if each "dup" will be pointed by a different KSM page copy of
+that content.
+
+This way the stable tree lookup computational complexity is unaffected
+if compared to an unlimited list of reverse mappings. It is still
+enforced that there cannot be KSM page content duplicates in the
+stable tree itself.
+
+The deduplication limit enforced by ``max_page_sharing`` is required
+to avoid the virtual memory rmap lists to grow too large. The rmap
+walk has O(N) complexity where N is the number of rmap_items
+(i.e. virtual mappings) that are sharing the page, which is in turn
+capped by ``max_page_sharing``. So this effectively spreads the linear
+O(N) computational complexity from rmap walk context over different
+KSM pages. The ksmd walk over the stable_node "chains" is also O(N),
+but N is the number of stable_node "dups", not the number of
+rmap_items, so it has not a significant impact on ksmd performance. In
+practice the best stable_node "dup" candidate will be kept and found
+at the head of the "dups" list.
+
+High values of ``max_page_sharing`` result in faster memory merging
+(because there will be fewer stable_node dups queued into the
+stable_node chain->hlist to check for pruning) and higher
+deduplication factor at the expense of slower worst case for rmap
+walks for any KSM page which can happen during swapping, compaction,
+NUMA balancing and page migration.
+
+The ``stable_node_dups/stable_node_chains`` ratio is also affected by the
+``max_page_sharing`` tunable, and an high ratio may indicate fragmentation
+in the stable_node dups, which could be solved by introducing
+fragmentation algorithms in ksmd which would refile rmap_items from
+one stable_node dup to another stable_node dup, in order to free up
+stable_node "dups" with few rmap_items in them, but that may increase
+the ksmd CPU usage and possibly slowdown the readonly computations on
+the KSM pages of the applications.
+
+The whole list of stable_node "dups" linked in the stable_node
+"chains" is scanned periodically in order to prune stale stable_nodes.
+The frequency of such scans is defined by
+``stable_node_chains_prune_millisecs`` sysfs tunable.
+
+Reference
+---------
+.. kernel-doc:: mm/ksm.c
+   :functions: mm_slot ksm_scan stable_node rmap_item
+
+--
+Izik Eidus,
+Hugh Dickins, 17 Nov 2009