[PATCH v9 7/8] mm: use memcpy_nontemporal() in zone-device template copies
"Li Zhe" <[email protected]> Mon, 3 Aug 2026 15:09:28 +0800
| Newsgroups | org.kernel.vger.linux-hardening,org.kernel.vger.linux-arch,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kvack.linux-mm |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
The template fast path currently uses memcpy() for the actual struct page copy. Switch zone_device_page_init_from_template() to memcpy_nontemporal(). ZONE_DEVICE memmap initialization is largely write-once: each struct page is populated once, and most destination cachelines are not expected to be reused immediately afterwards. On x86, a regular cached memcpy() can therefore incur write-allocate traffic by pulling destination cachelines into the cache before writeback, and can populate the cache with data that has little near-term reuse. Using memcpy_nontemporal() lets this path request nontemporal stores for that copy pattern, which can reduce cache pollution and avoid part of the associated write-allocate overhead, while architectures without a specialized backend still fall back to memcpy(). Do not add a KASAN/KMSAN-specific fallback around this call site. As Muchun pointed out, special KASAN handling for memcpy_flushcache() or memcpy_nontemporal(), if needed, belongs in the low-level helper rather than in this ZONE_DEVICE caller. No separate drain is added here. memcpy_nontemporal() is used only as the copy primitive while memmap_init_zone_device() is still initializing the struct page array. The ordinary stores that follow in this path, such as compound-page setup, are part of the same CPU's initialization sequence; they are not used as a publication store that tells another CPU or device to consume data written by the non-temporal copy. Therefore this call site does not need a helper-level drain for correctness. Callers that use memcpy_nontemporal() as part of a producer-consumer or device-visible handoff must add the required ordering themselves. Tested in a VM with a 100 GB fsdax namespace device configured with map=dev and a 100 GB devdax namespace (align=2097152) on Intel Ice Lake server. Test procedure: Rebind the nd_pmem and dax_pmem driver 30 times and collect the memmap initialization time from the pr_debug() output of memmap_init_zone_device(). Base(v7.2-rc1): Average of rebinds for nd_pmem driver: 244.28 ms Average of rebinds for dax_pmem driver: 273.31 ms With this patch and its prerequisites applied: Average of rebinds for nd_pmem driver: 150.83 ms Average of rebinds for dax_pmem driver: 153.55 ms This reduces the average memmap initialization time measured during rebind by about 38.3% for nd_pmem and 43.8% for dax_pmem. Signed-off-by: Li Zhe <[email protected]> --- mm/mm_init.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/mm/mm_init.c b/mm/mm_init.c index 9691fa2a060d..bb2007806a28 100644 --- a/mm/mm_init.c +++ b/mm/mm_init.c @@ -1101,7 +1101,7 @@ static void zone_device_page_init_from_template(struct page *page, * to the destination page. */ zone_device_page_update_template(template, pfn); - memcpy(page, template, sizeof(*page)); + memcpy_nontemporal(page, template, sizeof(*page)); } /* -- 2.20.1