staging: zcache: in-kernel tmem code

staging: zcache: in-kernel tmem code

[PATCH V2 1/3] drivers/staging: zcache: in-kernel tmem code

Transcendent memory ("tmem") is a clean API/ABI that provides
for an efficient address translation and a set of highly
concurrent access methods to copy data between a page-oriented
data source (e.g. cleancache or frontswap) and a page-addressable
memory ("PAM") data store.  Of critical importance, the PAM data
store is of unknown (and possibly varying) size so any individual
access may succeed or fail as defined by the API/ABI.

Tmem exports a basic set of access methods (e.g. put, get,
flush, flush object, new pool, and destroy pool) which are
normally called from a "host" (e.g. zcache).

To be functional, two sets of "ops" must be registered by the
host, one to provide "host services" (memory allocation) and
one to provide page-addressable memory ("PAM") hooks.

Tmem supports one or more "clients", each which can provide
a set of "pools" to partition pages.  Each pool contains
a set of "objects"; each object holds pointers to some number
of PAM page descriptors ("pampd"), indexed by an "index" number.
This triple <pool id, object id, index> is sometimes referred
to as a "handle".  Tmem's primary function is to essentially
provide address translation of handles into pampds and move
data appropriately.

As an example, for cleancache, a pool maps to a filesystem,
an object maps to a file, and the index is the page offset
into the file.  And in this patch, zcache is the host and
each PAM descriptor points to a compressed page of data.

Tmem supports two kinds of pages: "ephemeral" and "persistent".
Ephemeral pages may be asynchronously reclaimed "bottoms up"
so the data structures and concurrency model must allow for
this.  For example, each pampd must retain sufficient information
to invalidate tmem's handle-to-pampd translation.
its containing object so that, on reclaim, all tmem data
structures can be made consistent.

Signed-off-by: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>