Boot Time

Memory Management
Mike Rapoport
<[email protected]>

This project has received funding from the European

Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under grant agreement No 825377
Topics

● Memory initialization
● memblock: API and internals
● From memblock to kmalloc
Even the physical page allocator … needs to allocate
memory to initialise itself. But how can the physical
page allocator allocate memory to initialise itself?

Mel Gorman, Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager

Just before _start:

kernel parameters initrd FW data

● Lots of memory free

● Completely unclear where is it

Tread carefully!
From _start: to mm_init()

● Assembly sets up basic page table

○ Usually embedded into kernel .data
● setup_arch() continues memory initialization:
○ Detect physical memory
○ Reserve used areas (kernel image, initrd, firmware data etc)
● start_kernel() allocates several memory areas
○ Chunk size is usually larger than MAX_ORDER
○ Log buffer, VFS caches
● and calls mm_init()

And MM initialization is only a part of system init

Ancient history

● v2.0:

setup_arch (&command_line, &memory_start, &memory_end);

memory_start = paging_init (memory_start,memory_end);
...
memory_start = console_init (memory_start,memory_end);
#ifdef CONFIG_PCI
memory_start = pci_init(memory_start,memory_end);
#endif
memory_start = kmalloc_init (memory_start,memory_end);

● v2.3.23pre3:
○ bootmem - a First Fit allocator which uses a bitmap to represent memory
From bootmem to memblock

● Placing bootmem bitmap was challenging

○ Which bank, which NUMA node?
○ Bitmap size (1M for 32G of RAM)
● Slow transition to memblock
○ Started in v2.5 with powerpc64
○ Intermediate NO_BOOTMEM compatibility layer
● Completed in v4.20
Memblock vs bootmem

+ Static arrays instead of bitmap

➢ Can be used before memory configuration is known
+ Arbitrary granularity instead of page

− Allocation logic is more complex

➢ But it’s ok, we should not have many of those anyway
− Implicit growth of data structures
➢ Too many early reservations may corrupt used memory
memblock structure

memory reserved

base
size
flags
nid

Bank 0 Bank 1 Bank 2 Bank 3

Basic APIs

● memblock_add(), memblock_add_node()
○ Register memory bank with memblock
● memblock_remove()
○ Make memory region invisible to the kernel
● memblock_reserve()
○ Mark used memory region as reserved
● memblock_free()
○ Mark memory region as free
Allocation APIs returning physical address

Functions that allocate memory and return its physical address:

● memblock_phys_alloc()
○ Allocate chunk of requested size with specified alignment
● memblock_phys_alloc_range()
○ Allocate a chunk within certain range
● memblock_phys_alloc_try_nid()
○ Allocate a chunk on a certain NUMA node

The memory is not cleared and may contain garbage!

Allocation APIs returning virtual address

Functions that allocate memory and return its virtual address:

● memblock_alloc_try_nid_raw(),
memblock_alloc_try_nid()
○ Allocate chunk of requested size with specified alignment from certain NUMA
node and within certain range
○ If constraints are too tight, try another node and then drop lower limit
● The “normal” variant clears the memory
● The ‘_raw’ variant does not!
○ Could be poisoned if VM debug is enabled
And their convenience wrappers

Functions that allocate memory, clear it and return its virtual address:

● memblock_alloc()
○ Allocate chunk of requested size with specified alignment
● memblock_alloc_from()
○ Allocate chunk above certain physical address
● memblock_alloc_low()
○ Allocate chunk in low memory
● memblock_alloc_node()
○ Allocate chunk in certain NUMA node
Convenience wrappers cont.

Function that allocates memory, and return its virtual address:

● memblock_alloc_raw()
○ Allocate chunk of requested size with specified alignment
● The memory is not cleared
○ Could be poisoned if VM debug is enabled
Under the hood

● memblock_find_in_range_node()
○ Find free area in given range and node
○ Traverses free memory areas
■ memory && !reserved
○ Can be top-down or bottom-up

● memblock_reserve() the area

○ Merge adjacent entries
○ Double reserved array if needed
Under the hood

● memblock_alloc_range_nid()
○ Try to find free memory with all the constraints
○ Retry on all nodes
○ Retry without mirroring requirement
■ Only on systems that support memory mirroring
○ Return physical address
● memblock_alloc_internal()
○ Try memblock_alloc_range_nid()
○ Retry without the lower bound
○ Return virtual address
Controlling memblock behaviour

● memblock_allow_resize()
○ Enable/disable resizing of memblock arrays
● memblock_set_bottom_up()
○ Set allocation direction (default is top-down)
● memblock_enforce_memory_limit()
● memblock_cap_memory_range()
● memblock_mem_limit_remove_map()
● memblock_set_current_limit()
● memblock_trim_memory()
Querying memblock state

● memblock_phys_mem_size(), memblock_reserved_size()
● memblock_start_of_DRAM(), memblock_end_of_DRAM()
● memblock_is_memory(), memblock_is_reserved()
○ Check for a given address
● memblock_is_region_memory(), memblock_is_region_reserved()
○ Check for a given range
● memblock_get_current_limit()
○ Get high limit for allowed allocations
 Traversing memblock arrays

● for_each_free_mem_range(), for_each_free_mem_range_reverse()
○ Iterate over free memory areas
○ Take into account node and memory attributes
● for_each_reserved_mem_region()
○ Iterate over reserved memory areas
● for_each_mem_range(), for_each_mem_range_rev()
○ Iterate over intersection of memblock arrays
■ For example areas found in memory and absent in reserved
● for_each_mem_pfn_range()
● for_each_memblock()
● for_each_memblock_type()
Back to MM init

● Reserve used areas - memblock_reserve()

○ Kernel, initrd, firmware pages
● Detect and register physical memory - memblock_add()
○ Available banks, NUMA topology
● Set memblock parameters suitable for a machine
○ Limit to mapped memory, enforce bottom up allocations
● Use memblock_alloc() and friends to allocate memory
● Give pages to the buddy page allocator
○ memblock_free_all()
○ Usually called by arch specific mem_init()
References

● A quick history of early-boot memory allocators

● Boot Memory Allocator chapter
○ from “Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager” by Mel Gorman
● Boot time memory management, kernel documentation
Thank you!