At start of the day the Xen hypervisor presents a contiguous mfn list
to a pv-domain. In order to support sparse memory this mfn list is
accessed via a three level p2m tree built early in the boot process.
Whenever the system needs the mfn associated with a pfn this tree is
used to find the mfn.
Instead of using a software walked tree for accessing a specific mfn
list entry this patch is creating a virtual address area for the
entire possible mfn list including memory holes. The holes are
covered by mapping a pre-defined page consisting only of "invalid
mfn" entries. Access to a mfn entry is possible by just using the
virtual base address of the mfn list and the pfn as index into that
list. This speeds up the (hot) path of determining the mfn of a
pfn.
Kernel build on a Dell Latitude E6440 (2 cores, HT) in 64 bit Dom0
showed following improvements:
Elapsed time: 32:50 -> 32:35
System: 18:07 -> 17:47
User: 104:00 -> 103:30
Tested with following configurations:
- 64 bit dom0, 8GB RAM
- 64 bit dom0, 128 GB RAM, PCI-area above 4 GB
- 32 bit domU, 512 MB, 8 GB, 43 GB (more wouldn't work even without
the patch)
- 32 bit domU, ballooning up and down
- 32 bit domU, save and restore
- 32 bit domU with PCI passthrough
- 64 bit domU, 8 GB, 2049 MB, 5000 MB
- 64 bit domU, ballooning up and down
- 64 bit domU, save and restore
- 64 bit domU with PCI passthrough
Signed-off-by: Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@citrix.com>
054954eb05