re: Introducing non-RAM managed page ("device page")

[matthew green <mrg%eterna.com.au@localhost>]

   UVM allocates a managed page's state (struct vm_page) for each page-sized 
RAM,
   because its main purpose is "page cache" - cache of on-disk page-sized data.
   OTOH, "device pages" is always volatile.  They're not cache.

i think there are more reasons than simple page cache issues.
   
   I'd propose a simple extension to struct vm_page handling.  Make ``struct
   vm_page *'' either a pointer to its object *or* a magic integral value, which
   contains physical address (or offset of its physical device's base).  Users 
of
   struct vm_page * have to check if it's really a RAM's vm_page, like
   
        if (uvm_pageisdevice_p(pg)) {
                ...
        }
   
   If anyone knows things I'm missing, please let me know.

there are hundreds of uses of this that would need to be updated.  it
seems like a very invasive hack to support your use-cases.

can you do it with the "wasteful" full vm_page and see what happens?
this seems like a premature and extremely invasive optimisation.


i'd like to see some more support in the MI VM code to handle different
page sizes (large ones :-) and other similar problems in the future, but
this does not seem like the right way forward to me.


.mrg.