Proposals

Libhugetlbfs and transparent huge pages

Session information has not yet been published for this event.

*
BoF
60 minute BoF
Scheduled: Thursday, September 8, 2011 from 8:00 – 9:00pm in Sonoma Mountain

One Line Summary

How libhugetlbfs and THP can be used together to provide easy access to huge pages.

Abstract

The inclusion of Transparent Huge Pages (THP) into the mainline kernel has given easy access to huge
pages for users on x86-based architectures. THP now provides some functionality which libhugetlbfs
was designed to enable, however there remain cases on x86-based architectures where libhugetlbfs can
scratch the itch. Additionally, libhugetlbfs remains the only game in town for non-x86-based architectures.

This paper will discuss what functionality libhugetlbfs offers to administrators and users on all architectures which support huge pages. Specific topics will include our simplified user-space setup, the four ways offered by libhugetlbfs (program segments, malloc, shm, and direct access) to use huge pages, and areas where libhugetlbfs is still useful on THP-enabled systems. This session will also cover the setup, configuration, and benchmarking of a simple application using huge pages. Finally, the paper
will discuss our future plans to develop libhugetlbfs admin tools to help with configuring and using THP.

Tags

thp, hugepages, libhugetlbfs

Speaker

  • Biography

    Eric is a kernel developer and the maintainer of libhugetlbfs. His interests include memory management, virtualization, and arduino development. He currently works for IBM.