Add support for MADV_POPULATE_WRITE (Linux 5.14+) to force page population
AFTER munmap trimming in SuperSlab fallback path.
Changes:
1. core/box/ss_os_acquire_box.c (lines 171-201):
- Apply MADV_POPULATE_WRITE after munmap prefix/suffix trim
- Fallback to explicit page touch for kernels < 5.14
- Always cleanup suffix region (remove MADV_DONTNEED path)
2. core/superslab_cache.c (lines 111-121):
- Use MADV_POPULATE_WRITE instead of memset for efficiency
- Fallback to memset if madvise fails
Testing Results:
- Page faults: Unchanged (~145K per 1M ops)
- Throughput: -2% (4.18M → 4.10M ops/s with HAKMEM_SS_PREFAULT=1)
- Root cause: 97.6% of page faults are from libc memset in initialization,
not from SuperSlab memory access
Conclusion: MADV_POPULATE_WRITE is effective for SuperSlab memory,
but overall page fault bottleneck comes from TLS/shared pool initialization.
Startup warmup remains the most effective solution (already implemented
in bench_random_mixed.c with +9.5% improvement).
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>