FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2026
glibc — Proposed
Propose Fine-Grained THP Control via GNU Properties
Adds GNU properties to allow per-application control of Transparent Huge Pages (THP) on read-only segments and in malloc.
H.J. Lu proposes adding GNU_PROPERTY_1_NEEDED_THP_ON_READ_ONLY_SEGMENTS and GNU_PROPERTY_1_NEEDED_THP_ON_MALLOC to allow applications to opt-in to THP usage. The goal is to give developers more control over THP, which has trade-offs, especially for databases. The naming of the properties is under debate.
Technical Tradeoffs
- Adding new GNU properties increases complexity but provides finer-grained control.
- Opting into THP can improve performance in some cases but may degrade it in others.
- The `NEEDED` suffix is questioned; alternatives are `OPTIONAL`, `DESIRED`, or no suffix.