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Comment by toast0 | Hacker News Reader

> changes in the page table block the whole process, doesn't matter what combination of concurrency models you're using.

I don't think that's necessarily true --- adding a mapping doesn't need to stop other threads that share a page table unless they're also modifying the page table. I don't think the TLB would cache an unmapped entry, but even if it did, the page fault handler will check, see that it's fine and resume execution.

For unmapping, it's different, in that you have to do IPI TLB shootdowns, but that interupts, not blocks.

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And even if other threads are contending for the page table lock, the kernel doesn’t hold that lock for the entire duration of the I/O. Only for the tiny fraction of that duration where the kernel is spending CPU time doing bookkeeping. For the rest of the time, during which the system is just waiting for the disk, the thread that triggered the page-in is still blocked, but other threads can do whatever they want, including page-table modifications.

From what I’ve read on LWN, contention on the page table lock (mmap_sem / mmap_lock) has been a real and perennial issue for Linux, especially on servers with huge numbers of CPUs; but it’s a far smaller effect than what this post is talking about.

> From what I’ve read on LWN, contention on the page table lock (mmap_sem / mmap_lock) has been a real and perennial issue for Linux, especially on servers with huge numbers of CPUs; but it’s a far smaller effect than what this post is talking about.

...and either way, that's kernel lock contention, not blocking IO.

fair pushback, though s/unless they're also modifying the page table/unless they're also accessing the page table/, as it too needs to be synchronized. so yes, sometimes it has no effect, but given how often programs end up loading, crosstalk is super common

Crosstalk is absolutely common for a number of operations, but that crosstalk is NOT the same as blocking until the page is loaded into RAM. That operation is blocking on IO.

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