tree eb4f3fa42a83613e2fe586b2555a811740952dce
parent a0a8f5364a5ad248aec6cb705e0092ff563edc2f
author Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> 1217040322 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1217098805 -0700

mm: introduce get_user_pages_fast

Introduce a new get_user_pages_fast mm API, which is basically a
get_user_pages with a less general API (but still tends to be suited to
the common case):

- task and mm are always current and current->mm
- force is always 0
- pages is always non-NULL
- don't pass back vmas

This restricted API can be implemented in a much more scalable way on many
architectures when the ptes are present, by walking the page tables
locklessly (no mmap_sem or page table locks).  When the ptes are not
populated, get_user_pages_fast() could be slower.

This is implemented locklessly on x86, and used in some key direct IO call
sites, in later patches, which provides nearly 10% performance improvement
on a threaded database workload.

Lots of other code could use this too, depending on use cases (eg.  grep
drivers/).  And it might inspire some new and clever ways to use it.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Dave Kleikamp <shaggy@austin.ibm.com>
Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Cc: Dave Kleikamp <shaggy@austin.ibm.com>
Cc: Badari Pulavarty <pbadari@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Zach Brown <zach.brown@oracle.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>