Subject: [PATCH RFC 0/9] mm/virtio: skip redundant zeroing of host-zeroed reported pages

From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:50:36 -0400

When a guest reports free pages to the hypervisor via virtio-balloon's
free page reporting, the host typically zeros those pages when reclaiming
their backing memory (e.g., via MADV_DONTNEED on anonymous mappings).
When the guest later reallocates those pages, the kernel zeros them
again -- redundantly.

This series eliminates that double-zeroing by propagating the "host
already zeroed this page" information through the buddy allocator and
into the page fault path.

Performance with THP enabled on a 2GB VM, 1 vCPU, allocating
256MB of anonymous pages:

  metric         baseline    optimized   delta
  task-clock     179ms       99ms        -45%
  cache-misses   1.22M       287K        -76%
  instructions   15.1M       13.9M       -8%

With hugetlb surplus pages:

  metric         baseline    optimized   delta
  task-clock     322ms       9.9ms       -97%
  cache-misses   659K        88K         -87%
  instructions   18.3M       10.6M       -42%

Notes:
- The virtio_balloon patch (9/9) is a testing hack with a module
  parameter.  A proper virtio feature flag is needed before merging.
- Patch 8/9 adds a sysfs flush trigger for deterministic testing
  (avoids waiting for the 2-second reporting delay).
- The optimization is most effective with THP, where entire 2MB
  pages are allocated directly from reported order-9+ buddy pages.
  Without THP, only ~21% of order-0 allocations come from reported
  pages due to low-order fragmentation.
- Persistent hugetlb pool pages are not covered: when freed by
  userspace they return to the hugetlb free pool, not the buddy
  allocator, so they are never reported to the host.  Surplus
  hugetlb pages are allocated from buddy and do benefit.

Test program:

  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <stdlib.h>
  #include <string.h>
  #include <sys/mman.h>

  #ifndef MADV_POPULATE_WRITE
  #define MADV_POPULATE_WRITE 23
  #endif
  #ifndef MAP_HUGETLB
  #define MAP_HUGETLB 0x40000
  #endif

  int main(int argc, char **argv)
  {
      unsigned long size;
      int flags = MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANONYMOUS;
      void *p;
      int r;

      if (argc < 2) {
          fprintf(stderr, "usage: %s <size_mb> [huge]\n", argv[0]);
          return 1;
      }
      size = atol(argv[1]) * 1024UL * 1024;
      if (argc >= 3 && strcmp(argv[2], "huge") == 0)
          flags |= MAP_HUGETLB;
      p = mmap(NULL, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, flags, -1, 0);
      if (p == MAP_FAILED) {
          perror("mmap");
          return 1;
      }
      r = madvise(p, size, MADV_POPULATE_WRITE);
      if (r) {
          perror("madvise");
          return 1;
      }
      munmap(p, size);
      return 0;
  }

Test script (bench.sh):

  #!/bin/bash
  # Usage: bench.sh <size_mb> <mode> <iterations> [huge]
  # mode 0 = baseline, mode 1 = skip zeroing
  SZ=${1:-256}; MODE=${2:-0}; ITER=${3:-10}; HUGE=${4:-}
  FLUSH=/sys/module/page_reporting/parameters/flush
  PERF_DATA=/tmp/perf-$MODE.data
  rmmod virtio_balloon 2>/dev/null
  insmod virtio_balloon.ko host_zeroes_pages=$MODE
  echo 1 > $FLUSH
  [ "$HUGE" = "huge" ] && echo $((SZ/2)) > /proc/sys/vm/nr_overcommit_hugepages
  rm -f $PERF_DATA
  echo "=== sz=${SZ}MB mode=$MODE iter=$ITER $HUGE ==="
  for i in $(seq 1 $ITER); do
      echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
      echo 1 > $FLUSH
      perf stat record -e task-clock,instructions,cache-misses \
          -o $PERF_DATA --append -- ./alloc_once $SZ $HUGE
  done
  [ "$HUGE" = "huge" ] && echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_overcommit_hugepages
  rmmod virtio_balloon
  perf stat report -i $PERF_DATA

Compile and run:
  gcc -static -O2 -o alloc_once alloc_once.c
  bash bench.sh 256 0 10          # baseline (regular pages)
  bash bench.sh 256 1 10          # optimized (regular pages)
  bash bench.sh 256 0 10 huge     # baseline (hugetlb surplus)
  bash bench.sh 256 1 10 huge     # optimized (hugetlb surplus)

Written with assistance from claude. Everything manually read, patchset
split and commit logs edited manually.

Michael S. Tsirkin (9):
  mm: page_alloc: propagate PageReported flag across buddy splits
  mm: page_reporting: skip redundant zeroing of host-zeroed reported
    pages
  mm: add __GFP_PREZEROED flag and folio_test_clear_prezeroed()
  mm: skip zeroing in vma_alloc_zeroed_movable_folio for pre-zeroed
    pages
  mm: skip zeroing in alloc_anon_folio for pre-zeroed pages
  mm: skip zeroing in vma_alloc_anon_folio_pmd for pre-zeroed pages
  mm: hugetlb: skip zeroing of pre-zeroed hugetlb pages
  mm: page_reporting: add flush parameter to trigger immediate reporting
  virtio_balloon: a hack to enable host-zeroed page optimization

 drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c |  7 +++++
 fs/hugetlbfs/inode.c            |  3 ++-
 include/linux/gfp_types.h       |  5 ++++
 include/linux/highmem.h         |  6 +++--
 include/linux/hugetlb.h         |  2 +-
 include/linux/mm.h              | 22 ++++++++++++++++
 include/linux/page_reporting.h  |  3 +++
 mm/huge_memory.c                |  4 +--
 mm/hugetlb.c                    |  3 ++-
 mm/memory.c                     |  5 ++--
 mm/page_alloc.c                 | 46 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 mm/page_reporting.c             | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
 mm/page_reporting.h             |  2 ++
 13 files changed, 129 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)

-- 
MST