Multiple page size support in the Linux kernel

Abstract

The Linux kernel currently supports a single user space page size, usually the minimum dic-tated by the architecture. This paper describes the ongoing modifications to the Linux kernel to allow applications to vary the size of pages used to map their address spaces and to reap the performance benefits associated with the use of large pages. The results from our implementation of mul-tiple page size support in the Linux kernel are very encouraging. Namely, we find that the performance improvement of applications written in various modern programming lan-guages range from 10 % to over 35%. The ob-served performance improvements are consis-tent with those reported by other researchers. Considering that memory latencies continue to grow and represent a barrier for achieving scal-able performance on faster processors, we ar-gue that multiple page size support is a neces-sary and important addition to the OS kernel and the Linux kernel in particular. 1