Linux developer Rik van Riel has pulled off some nice Linux kernel optimizations over the years and the Meta engineer has been working on another one around batching of look-ups with Linux's follow_page_mask() that is used for translating virtual addresses to the corresponding struct page.

With the Linux kernel's follow_page_mask() function currently walking the page tables one page at a time, Rik van Riel has been working on adapting it so walkers can hand back more than one page per call. This ability to batch look-ups in turn can provide for nice speed-ups for users of follow_page_mask() like Linux's get_user_pages() code.

The Linux kernel's gup_test program for exercising get_user_pages() and other memory management exercises is showing some nice gains out of these request for comments (RFC) patches:

Those interested in the Linux kernel memory management "MM" area or curious about this work can learn more via this patch series.