Re: [PATCH RFC 01/11] mm: introduce hw_pte_t for PTE table storage

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:19:32 +0100
Muhammad Usama Anjum <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 31/07/2026 6:49 am, Anshuman Khandual wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 27, 2026 at 05:46:52PM +0100, Muhammad Usama Anjum wrote:  
> >> pte_t is used both for logical PTE values and for entries stored in a PTE
> >> table, so pte_t * does not distinguish a pointer to a copied value from a
> >> pointer to table storage.  
> > 
> > Should we rather call them as "Linux PTE" and "HW PTE" instead ?
> > 
> > Some like "Logical PTE" does not really sound very clear on what it represents.  
> Yeah, I should make distinction more visible in the cover letter.

Just as an outside observer, so take this with a grain of salt and feel
free to totally ignore it, the term "Logical" and "Physical" to me would be
that the Logical one is created by software and is not mapped to hardware,
whereas the "Physical" one would be backed by hardware.

Just using the terminology from LVM where there are Logical volumes and
Physical volumes.

But if that doesn't represent what you are trying to accomplish here, then
it is indeed not the appropriate terminology.

Again, feel free to ignore this comment, but I just wanted to give an
outside perspective of the terminology that I see.

Cheers,

-- Steve