2 The intent of this file is to give a brief summary of hugetlbpage support in
3 the Linux kernel. This support is built on top of multiple page size support
4 that is provided by most modern architectures. For example, i386
5 architecture supports 4K and 4M (2M in PAE mode) page sizes, ia64
6 architecture supports multiple page sizes 4K, 8K, 64K, 256K, 1M, 4M, 16M,
7 256M and ppc64 supports 4K and 16M. A TLB is a cache of virtual-to-physical
8 translations. Typically this is a very scarce resource on processor.
9 Operating systems try to make best use of limited number of TLB resources.
10 This optimization is more critical now as bigger and bigger physical memories
11 (several GBs) are more readily available.
13 Users can use the huge page support in Linux kernel by either using the mmap
14 system call or standard SYSv shared memory system calls (shmget, shmat).
16 First the Linux kernel needs to be built with CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE (present
17 under Processor types and feature) and CONFIG_HUGETLBFS (present under file
18 system option on config menu) config options.
20 The kernel built with hugepage support should show the number of configured
21 hugepages in the system by running the "cat /proc/meminfo" command.
23 /proc/meminfo also provides information about the total number of hugetlb
24 pages configured in the kernel. It also displays information about the
25 number of free hugetlb pages at any time. It also displays information about
26 the configured hugepage size - this is needed for generating the proper
27 alignment and size of the arguments to the above system calls.
29 The output of "cat /proc/meminfo" will have output like:
36 /proc/filesystems should also show a filesystem of type "hugetlbfs" configured
39 /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages indicates the current number of configured hugetlb
40 pages in the kernel. Super user can dynamically request more (or free some
41 pre-configured) hugepages.
42 The allocation( or deallocation) of hugetlb pages is posible only if there are
43 enough physically contiguous free pages in system (freeing of hugepages is
44 possible only if there are enough hugetlb pages free that can be transfered
45 back to regular memory pool).
47 Pages that are used as hugetlb pages are reserved inside the kernel and can
48 not be used for other purposes.
50 Once the kernel with Hugetlb page support is built and running, a user can
51 use either the mmap system call or shared memory system calls to start using
52 the huge pages. It is required that the system administrator preallocate
53 enough memory for huge page purposes.
55 Use the following command to dynamically allocate/deallocate hugepages:
57 echo 20 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
59 This command will try to configure 20 hugepages in the system. The success
60 or failure of allocation depends on the amount of physically contiguous
61 memory that is preset in system at this time. System administrators may want
62 to put this command in one of the local rc init file. This will enable the
63 kernel to request huge pages early in the boot process (when the possibility
64 of getting physical contiguous pages is still very high).
66 If the user applications are going to request hugepages using mmap system
67 call, then it is required that system administrator mount a file system of
70 mount none /mnt/huge -t hugetlbfs <uid=value> <gid=value> <mode=value>
71 <size=value> <nr_inodes=value>
73 This command mounts a (pseudo) filesystem of type hugetlbfs on the directory
74 /mnt/huge. Any files created on /mnt/huge uses hugepages. The uid and gid
75 options sets the owner and group of the root of the file system. By default
76 the uid and gid of the current process are taken. The mode option sets the
77 mode of root of file system to value & 0777. This value is given in octal.
78 By default the value 0755 is picked. The size option sets the maximum value of
79 memory (huge pages) allowed for that filesystem (/mnt/huge). The size is
80 rounded down to HPAGE_SIZE. The option nr_inode sets the maximum number of
81 inodes that /mnt/huge can use. If the size or nr_inode options are not
82 provided on command line then no limits are set. For size and nr_inodes
83 options, you can use [G|g]/[M|m]/[K|k] to represent giga/mega/kilo. For
84 example, size=2K has the same meaning as size=2048. An example is given at
85 the end of this document.
87 read and write system calls are not supported on files that reside on hugetlb
90 A regular chown, chgrp and chmod commands (with right permissions) could be
91 used to change the file attributes on hugetlbfs.
93 Also, it is important to note that no such mount command is required if the
94 applications are going to use only shmat/shmget system calls. Users who
95 wish to use hugetlb page via shared memory segment should be a member of
96 a supplementary group and system admin needs to configure that gid into
97 /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_shm_group. It is possible for same or different
98 applications to use any combination of mmaps and shm* calls. Though the
99 mount of filesystem will be required for using mmaps.
101 *******************************************************************
104 * Example of using hugepage memory in a user application using Sys V shared
105 * memory system calls. In this example the app is requesting 256MB of
106 * memory that is backed by huge pages. The application uses the flag
107 * SHM_HUGETLB in the shmget system call to inform the kernel that it is
108 * requesting hugepages.
110 * For the ia64 architecture, the Linux kernel reserves Region number 4 for
111 * hugepages. That means the addresses starting with 0x800000... will need
112 * to be specified. Specifying a fixed address is not required on ppc64,
115 * Note: The default shared memory limit is quite low on many kernels,
116 * you may need to increase it via:
118 * echo 268435456 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
120 * This will increase the maximum size per shared memory segment to 256MB.
121 * The other limit that you will hit eventually is shmall which is the
122 * total amount of shared memory in pages. To set it to 16GB on a system
123 * with a 4kB pagesize do:
125 * echo 4194304 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmall
129 #include <sys/types.h>
132 #include <sys/mman.h>
135 #define SHM_HUGETLB 04000
138 #define LENGTH (256UL*1024*1024)
140 #define dprintf(x) printf(x)
142 /* Only ia64 requires this */
144 #define ADDR (void *)(0x8000000000000000UL)
145 #define SHMAT_FLAGS (SHM_RND)
147 #define ADDR (void *)(0x0UL)
148 #define SHMAT_FLAGS (0)
157 if ((shmid = shmget(2, LENGTH,
158 SHM_HUGETLB | IPC_CREAT | SHM_R | SHM_W)) < 0) {
162 printf("shmid: 0x%x\n", shmid);
164 shmaddr = shmat(shmid, ADDR, SHMAT_FLAGS);
165 if (shmaddr == (char *)-1) {
166 perror("Shared memory attach failure");
167 shmctl(shmid, IPC_RMID, NULL);
170 printf("shmaddr: %p\n", shmaddr);
172 dprintf("Starting the writes:\n");
173 for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) {
174 shmaddr[i] = (char)(i);
175 if (!(i % (1024 * 1024)))
180 dprintf("Starting the Check...");
181 for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++)
182 if (shmaddr[i] != (char)i)
183 printf("\nIndex %lu mismatched\n", i);
186 if (shmdt((const void *)shmaddr) != 0) {
187 perror("Detach failure");
188 shmctl(shmid, IPC_RMID, NULL);
192 shmctl(shmid, IPC_RMID, NULL);
197 *******************************************************************
200 * Example of using hugepage memory in a user application using the mmap
201 * system call. Before running this application, make sure that the
202 * administrator has mounted the hugetlbfs filesystem (on some directory
203 * like /mnt) using the command mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt. In this
204 * example, the app is requesting memory of size 256MB that is backed by
207 * For ia64 architecture, Linux kernel reserves Region number 4 for hugepages.
208 * That means the addresses starting with 0x800000... will need to be
209 * specified. Specifying a fixed address is not required on ppc64, i386
215 #include <sys/mman.h>
218 #define FILE_NAME "/mnt/hugepagefile"
219 #define LENGTH (256UL*1024*1024)
220 #define PROTECTION (PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE)
222 /* Only ia64 requires this */
224 #define ADDR (void *)(0x8000000000000000UL)
225 #define FLAGS (MAP_SHARED | MAP_FIXED)
227 #define ADDR (void *)(0x0UL)
228 #define FLAGS (MAP_SHARED)
231 void check_bytes(char *addr)
233 printf("First hex is %x\n", *((unsigned int *)addr));
236 void write_bytes(char *addr)
240 for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++)
241 *(addr + i) = (char)i;
244 void read_bytes(char *addr)
249 for (i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++)
250 if (*(addr + i) != (char)i) {
251 printf("Mismatch at %lu\n", i);
261 fd = open(FILE_NAME, O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0755);
263 perror("Open failed");
267 addr = mmap(ADDR, LENGTH, PROTECTION, FLAGS, fd, 0);
268 if (addr == MAP_FAILED) {
274 printf("Returned address is %p\n", addr);
279 munmap(addr, LENGTH);