MPX-enabled applications using large swaths of memory can
potentially have large numbers of bounds tables in process
address space to save bounds information. These tables can take
up huge swaths of memory (as much as 80% of the memory on the
system) even if we clean them up aggressively. In the worst-case
scenario, the tables can be 4x the size of the data structure
being tracked. IOW, a 1-page structure can require 4 bounds-table
pages.
Being this huge, our expectation is that folks using MPX are
going to be keen on figuring out how much memory is being
dedicated to it. So we need a way to track memory use for MPX.
If we want to specifically track MPX VMAs we need to be able to
distinguish them from normal VMAs, and keep them from getting
merged with normal VMAs. A new VM_ flag set only on MPX VMAs does
both of those things. With this flag, MPX bounds-table VMAs can
be distinguished from other VMAs, and userspace can also walk
/proc/$pid/smaps to get memory usage for MPX.
In addition to this flag, we also introduce a special ->vm_ops
specific to MPX VMAs (see the patch "add MPX specific mmap
interface"), but currently different ->vm_ops do not by
themselves prevent VMA merging, so we still need this flag.
We understand that VM_ flags are scarce and are open to other
options.
Signed-off-by: Qiaowei Ren <qiaowei.ren@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Cc: linux-mips@linux-mips.org
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@sr71.net>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20141114151825.565625B3@viggo.jf.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
4aae7e436f