[dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH 2/2] lib/librte_eal: Remove unnecessary hugepage zero-filling

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 12:07:54 +0000
"Xie, Huawei" <huawei.xie at intel.com> wrote:

> >>> The kernel fills new allocated (huge) pages with zeros.
> >>> DPDK just has to touch the pages to trigger the allocation.  
> I think we shouldn't reply on the assumption that kernel has zeroed the
> memory. Kernel zeroes the memory mostly to avoid information leakage.It
> could also achieve this by setting each bit to 1.
> What we indeed need to check is later DPDK initialization code doesn't
> assume the memory has been zeroed. Otherwise zero only that part of the
> memory. Does this makes sense?

If all new pages are zero, why does DPDK have to pre-touch the pages
at all?

I thought there as some optimization to initialize hugepages since
Oracle has same problem with their Shared Global Area which was why
hugpages were invented anyway