[dpdk-dev] Is contiguous hugepages memory still required in latest DPDKs?

[Ruslan Bilovol]

Hi,

Recently after moving to 4.4 Linux kernel we found that DPDK v16.07
can't find physically contiguous chunk of hugepages memory.

I've tracked this down to kernel commits
  81c0a2bb515f ("mm: page_alloc: fair zone allocator policy")
  fff4068cba48 ("mm: page_alloc: revert NUMA aspect of fair allocation policy")
  4ffeaf3560a5 ("mm: page_alloc: reduce cost of the fair zone allocation policy")

These commits changed default page allocator behavior so it now allocates
memory proportionally from preferred and lower zones. Hugepages
are scattered proportionally among few memory zones, so possibility
to find big physically contiguous chunk of hugepages memory is much lower.

I see that there were some attempts to move from contiguous hugepages
approach, like http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-March/035201.html
Also some discussion here: http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/users/2016-October/001050.html

The question: is contiguous hugepages memory still required in latest DPDKs,
and if not, since which version?

Thanks,
Ruslan