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authorYazen Ghannam <yazen.ghannam@amd.com>2026-09-03 10:43:25 -0500
committerBorislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>2026-09-10 18:05:43 -0700
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x86/amd_node: Fix PCI device reference counting in amd_smn_init()grafted
The local "root" pointer is a temporary variable used during the device search. Therefore, refcount related to the search iterators should be cleaned up after the search is complete. Use the __free() cleanup macro to ensure the refcount is decremented when the temporary pointer goes out of scope. Additionally, increment the refcount when caching a root pointer. This ensures the in-use refcount is separate from the temporary search refcounting. Finally, drop the redundant "root = NULL" before the second search loop. The pci_get_class() iterator always decrements the refcount of its "from" argument, so the first loop can only fall through with "root" already NULL. Fixes: 0a4b61d9c2e4 ("x86/amd_node: Fix AMD root device caching") Closes: https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260806160159.230453-1-jason.andryuk%40amd.com Reported-by: Sashiko <sashiko-bot@kernel.org> Assisted-by: LLM Signed-off-by: Yazen Ghannam <yazen.ghannam@amd.com> Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de> Reviewed-by: Mario Limonciello (AMD) <superm1@kernel.org> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260903154325.74343-1-yazen.ghannam@amd.com
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+=============================
+Guidance for writing policies
+=============================
+
+Try to keep transactionality out of it. The core is careful to
+avoid asking about anything that is migrating. This is a pain, but
+makes it easier to write the policies.
+
+Mappings are loaded into the policy at construction time.
+
+Every bio that is mapped by the target is referred to the policy.
+The policy can return a simple HIT or MISS or issue a migration.
+
+Currently there's no way for the policy to issue background work,
+e.g. to start writing back dirty blocks that are going to be evicted
+soon.
+
+Because we map bios, rather than requests it's easy for the policy
+to get fooled by many small bios. For this reason the core target
+issues periodic ticks to the policy. It's suggested that the policy
+doesn't update states (eg, hit counts) for a block more than once
+for each tick. The core ticks by watching bios complete, and so
+trying to see when the io scheduler has let the ios run.
+
+
+Overview of supplied cache replacement policies
+===============================================
+
+multiqueue (mq)
+---------------
+
+This policy is now an alias for smq (see below).
+
+The following tunables are accepted, but have no effect::
+
+ 'sequential_threshold <#nr_sequential_ios>'
+ 'random_threshold <#nr_random_ios>'
+ 'read_promote_adjustment <value>'
+ 'write_promote_adjustment <value>'
+ 'discard_promote_adjustment <value>'
+
+Stochastic multiqueue (smq)
+---------------------------
+
+This policy is the default.
+
+The stochastic multi-queue (smq) policy addresses some of the problems
+with the multiqueue (mq) policy.
+
+The smq policy (vs mq) offers the promise of less memory utilization,
+improved performance and increased adaptability in the face of changing
+workloads. smq also does not have any cumbersome tuning knobs.
+
+Users may switch from "mq" to "smq" simply by appropriately reloading a
+DM table that is using the cache target. Doing so will cause all of the
+mq policy's hints to be dropped. Also, performance of the cache may
+degrade slightly until smq recalculates the origin device's hotspots
+that should be cached.
+
+Memory usage
+^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The mq policy used a lot of memory; 88 bytes per cache block on a 64
+bit machine.
+
+smq uses 28bit indexes to implement its data structures rather than
+pointers. It avoids storing an explicit hit count for each block. It
+has a 'hotspot' queue, rather than a pre-cache, which uses a quarter of
+the entries (each hotspot block covers a larger area than a single
+cache block).
+
+All this means smq uses ~25bytes per cache block. Still a lot of
+memory, but a substantial improvement nonetheless.
+
+Level balancing
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+mq placed entries in different levels of the multiqueue structures
+based on their hit count (~ln(hit count)). This meant the bottom
+levels generally had the most entries, and the top ones had very
+few. Having unbalanced levels like this reduced the efficacy of the
+multiqueue.
+
+smq does not maintain a hit count, instead it swaps hit entries with
+the least recently used entry from the level above. The overall
+ordering being a side effect of this stochastic process. With this
+scheme we can decide how many entries occupy each multiqueue level,
+resulting in better promotion/demotion decisions.
+
+Adaptability:
+The mq policy maintained a hit count for each cache block. For a
+different block to get promoted to the cache its hit count has to
+exceed the lowest currently in the cache. This meant it could take a
+long time for the cache to adapt between varying IO patterns.
+
+smq doesn't maintain hit counts, so a lot of this problem just goes
+away. In addition it tracks performance of the hotspot queue, which
+is used to decide which blocks to promote. If the hotspot queue is
+performing badly then it starts moving entries more quickly between
+levels. This lets it adapt to new IO patterns very quickly.
+
+Performance
+^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Testing smq shows substantially better performance than mq.
+
+cleaner
+-------
+
+The cleaner writes back all dirty blocks in a cache to decommission it.
+
+Examples
+========
+
+The syntax for a table is::
+
+ cache <metadata dev> <cache dev> <origin dev> <block size>
+ <#feature_args> [<feature arg>]*
+ <policy> <#policy_args> [<policy arg>]*
+
+The syntax to send a message using the dmsetup command is::
+
+ dmsetup message <mapped device> 0 sequential_threshold 1024
+ dmsetup message <mapped device> 0 random_threshold 8
+
+Using dmsetup::
+
+ dmsetup create blah --table "0 268435456 cache /dev/sdb /dev/sdc \
+ /dev/sdd 512 0 mq 4 sequential_threshold 1024 random_threshold 8"
+ creates a 128GB large mapped device named 'blah' with the
+ sequential threshold set to 1024 and the random_threshold set to 8.