Speaker
Description
The mmap_sem has long been a contention point in the memory management
subsystem. In this session some mmap_sem related topics will be
discussed. Some optimization has been merged by the upstream kernel to
solve holding mmap_sem for write for excessive period of time in
munmap path by downgrading write mmap_sem to read. And, some
optimization are under discussion on the mailing list, i.e. release
mmap_sem earlier for page cache readahead, speculative page fault.
There is still optimization room by figuring out just what mmap_sem
protects. It covers access to many fields in the mm_struct structure.
It is also used for the virtual memory area (VMA) red-black tree, the
process VMA list, and various fields within the VMA structure itself.
Finer grain locks might be better to replace mmap_sem to reduce
contention, i.e. range lock or per vma lock.
