[PATCH v8 0/6] elf: THP-aware load segment alignment

[WANG Rui]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2026 at 9:26 AM H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2026 at 7:33 AM Wilco Dijkstra <Wilco.Dijkstra@arm.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi HJ,
> >
> > > Why a tunable at all?  Users may not set it.
> >
> > If it is already the default, users never need to set it. It makes benchmarking
> > simpler at a cost that is ~10000x lower than checking the huge page size.
> >
>
> Even if THP isn't enabled by default, like for 32-bit mode.  We may still
> want to enable THP on specific 32-bit applications.   A property bit provides
> such flexibility without requiring the user to set a tunable at run-time.

Do we really need a flag in the executable file to hint the loader to
cooperate with THP? If we already have the ability to modify the
executable, why not just make the LOAD segmengts hugepage-aligned in
the first place?

As you can see, this optimization is currently opt-in on most arches
rather than enabled by default. I see the tunable as more of a
transitional mechanism, it simply gives users a way to turn the opt on
and on arches where it is enbled by default, it can also be used to
turn it off.

Thanks,
Rui