The intent of this file is to give a brief summary of hugetlbpage support in the Linux kernel. This support is built on top of multiple page size support that is provided by most modern architectures. For example, i386 architecture supports 4K and 4M (2M in PAE mode) page sizes, ia64 architecture supports multiple page sizes 4K, 8K, 64K, 256K, 1M, 4M, 16M, 256M and ppc64 supports 4K and 16M. A TLB is a cache of virtual-to-physical translations. Typically this is a very scarce resource on processor. Operating systems try to make best use of limited number of TLB resources. This optimization is more critical now as bigger and bigger physical memories (several GBs) are more readily available. Users can use the huge page support in Linux kernel by either using the mmap system call or standard SYSv shared memory system calls (shmget, shmat). First the Linux kernel needs to be built with the CONFIG_HUGETLBFS (present under "File systems") and CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE (selected automatically when CONFIG_HUGETLBFS is selected) configuration options. The kernel built with hugepage support should show the number of configured hugepages in the system by running the "cat /proc/meminfo" command. /proc/meminfo also provides information about the total number of hugetlb pages configured in the kernel. It also displays information about the number of free hugetlb pages at any time. It also displays information about the configured hugepage size - this is needed for generating the proper alignment and size of the arguments to the above system calls. The output of "cat /proc/meminfo" will have output like: ..... HugePages_Total: xxx HugePages_Free: yyy Hugepagesize: zzz KB /proc/filesystems should also show a filesystem of type "hugetlbfs" configured in the kernel. /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages indicates the current number of configured hugetlb pages in the kernel. Super user can dynamically request more (or free some pre-configured) hugepages. The allocation (or deallocation) of hugetlb pages is possible only if there are enough physically contiguous free pages in system (freeing of hugepages is possible only if there are enough hugetlb pages free that can be transfered back to regular memory pool). Pages that are used as hugetlb pages are reserved inside the kernel and can not be used for other purposes. Once the kernel with Hugetlb page support is built and running, a user can use either the mmap system call or shared memory system calls to start using the huge pages. It is required that the system administrator preallocate enough memory for huge page purposes. Use the following command to dynamically allocate/deallocate hugepages: echo 20 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages This command will try to configure 20 hugepages in the system. The success or failure of allocation depends on the amount of physically contiguous memory that is preset in system at this time. System administrators may want to put this command in one of the local rc init file. This will enable the kernel to request huge pages early in the boot process (when the possibility of getting physical contiguous pages is still very high). If the user applications are going to request hugepages using mmap system call, then it is required that system administrator mount a file system of type hugetlbfs: mount none /mnt/huge -t hugetlbfs <uid=value> <gid=value> <mode=value> <size=value> <nr_inodes=value> This command mounts a (pseudo) filesystem of type hugetlbfs on the directory /mnt/huge. Any files created on /mnt/huge uses hugepages. The uid and gid options sets the owner and group of the root of the file system. By default the uid and gid of the current process are taken. The mode option sets the mode of root of file system to value & 0777. This value is given in octal. By default the value 0755 is picked. The size option sets the maximum value of memory (huge pages) allowed for that filesystem (/mnt/huge). The size is rounded down to HPAGE_SIZE. The option nr_inode sets the maximum number of inodes that /mnt/huge can use. If the size or nr_inode options are not provided on command line then no limits are set. For size and nr_inodes options, you can use [G|g]/[M|m]/[K|k] to represent giga/mega/kilo. For example, size=2K has the same meaning as size=2048. An example is given at the end of this document. read and write system calls are not supported on files that reside on hugetlb file systems. A regular chown, chgrp and chmod commands (with right permissions) could be used to change the file attributes on hugetlbfs. Also, it is important to note that no such mount command is required if the applications are going to use only shmat/shmget system calls. Users who wish to use hugetlb page via shared memory segment should be a member of a supplementary group and system admin needs to configure that gid into /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_shm_group. It is possible for same or different applications to use any combination of mmaps and shm* calls. Though the mount of filesystem will be required for using mmaps. ******************************************************************* /* * Example of using hugepage memory in a user application using Sys V shared * memory system calls. In this example the app is requesting 256MB of * memory that is backed by huge pages. The application uses the flag * SHM_HUGETLB in the shmget system call to inform the kernel that it is * requesting hugepages. * * For the ia64 architecture, the Linux kernel reserves Region number 4 for * hugepages. That means the addresses starting with 0x800000... will need * to be specified. Specifying a fixed address is not required on ppc64, * i386 or x86_64. * * Note: The default shared memory limit is quite low on many kernels, * you may need to increase it via: * * echo 268435456 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax * * This will increase the maximum size per shared memory segment to 256MB. * The other limit that you will hit eventually is shmall which is the * total amount of shared memory in pages. To set it to 16GB on a system * with a 4kB pagesize do: * * echo 4194304 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmall */ #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/ipc.h> #include <sys/shm.h> #include <sys/mman.h> #ifndef SHM_HUGETLB #define SHM_HUGETLB 04000 #endif #define LENGTH (256UL*1024*1024) #define dprintf(x) printf(x) /* Only ia64 requires this */ #ifdef __ia64__ #define ADDR (void *)(0x8000000000000000UL) #define SHMAT_FLAGS (SHM_RND) #else #define ADDR (void *)(0x0UL) #define SHMAT_FLAGS (0) #endif int main(void) { int shmid; unsigned long i; char *shmaddr; if ((shmid = shmget(2, LENGTH, SHM_HUGETLB | IPC_CREAT | SHM_R | SHM_W)) < 0) { perror("shmget"); exit(1); } printf("shmid: 0x%x\n", shmid); shmaddr = shmat(shmid, ADDR, SHMAT_FLAGS); if (shmaddr == (char *)-1) { perror("Shared memory attach failure"); shmctl(shmid, IPC_RMID, NULL); exit(2); } printf("shmaddr: %p\n", shmaddr); dprintf("Starting the writes:\n"); for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) { shmaddr[i] = (char)(i); if (!(i % (1024 * 1024))) dprintf("."); } dprintf("\n"); dprintf("Starting the Check..."); for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) if (shmaddr[i] != (char)i) printf("\nIndex %lu mismatched\n", i); dprintf("Done.\n"); if (shmdt((const void *)shmaddr) != 0) { perror("Detach failure"); shmctl(shmid, IPC_RMID, NULL); exit(3); } shmctl(shmid, IPC_RMID, NULL); return 0; } ******************************************************************* /* * Example of using hugepage memory in a user application using the mmap * system call. Before running this application, make sure that the * administrator has mounted the hugetlbfs filesystem (on some directory * like /mnt) using the command mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt. In this * example, the app is requesting memory of size 256MB that is backed by * huge pages. * * For ia64 architecture, Linux kernel reserves Region number 4 for hugepages. * That means the addresses starting with 0x800000... will need to be * specified. Specifying a fixed address is not required on ppc64, i386 * or x86_64. */ #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <sys/mman.h> #include <fcntl.h> #define FILE_NAME "/mnt/hugepagefile" #define LENGTH (256UL*1024*1024) #define PROTECTION (PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE) /* Only ia64 requires this */ #ifdef __ia64__ #define ADDR (void *)(0x8000000000000000UL) #define FLAGS (MAP_SHARED | MAP_FIXED) #else #define ADDR (void *)(0x0UL) #define FLAGS (MAP_SHARED) #endif void check_bytes(char *addr) { printf("First hex is %x\n", *((unsigned int *)addr)); } void write_bytes(char *addr) { unsigned long i; for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) *(addr + i) = (char)i; } void read_bytes(char *addr) { unsigned long i; check_bytes(addr); for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) if (*(addr + i) != (char)i) { printf("Mismatch at %lu\n", i); break; } } int main(void) { void *addr; int fd; fd = open(FILE_NAME, O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0755); if (fd < 0) { perror("Open failed"); exit(1); } addr = mmap(ADDR, LENGTH, PROTECTION, FLAGS, fd, 0); if (addr == MAP_FAILED) { perror("mmap"); unlink(FILE_NAME); exit(1); } printf("Returned address is %p\n", addr); check_bytes(addr); write_bytes(addr); read_bytes(addr); munmap(addr, LENGTH); close(fd); unlink(FILE_NAME); return 0; }