Commit 064fca37 authored by Mike Rapoport's avatar Mike Rapoport Committed by Jonathan Corbet

docs/vm: ksm: add "Design" section

Include the KSM description from the source code comment, add a subsection
about reverse mapping and include kernel-doc references for KSM data
structures.
Signed-off-by: default avatarMike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
parent db12c00f
......@@ -206,6 +206,45 @@ 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.
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 :c:type:`struct 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.
Reference
---------
.. kernel-doc:: mm/ksm.c
:functions: mm_slot ksm_scan stable_node rmap_item
--
Izik Eidus,
Hugh Dickins, 17 Nov 2009
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