[$] Keeping COWs in context (a.k.a. anonymous reverse mapping)
Date:
Thu, 14 May 2026 13:14:30 +0000
Description:
The kernel's reverse-mapping machinery is charged with locating the
page-table entries that refer to a given page in memory. The reverse
mapping of anonymous pages is handled differently than for file-backed
pages. The kernel's implementation of reverse mapping for anonymous pages
is, according to Lorenzo Stoakes in his proposal for a
memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage,
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit , " a very broken
abstraction ", due to its complexity. It also has some performance
problems. Stoakes was there to present, in raw form, a proposed
replacement that he calls a "COW context".
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Link to news story:
https://lwn.net/Articles/1072378/
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