diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 8c8d2bbefd5a..4cd84b16d6f4 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
 - vfs_cache_pressure
 - watermark_scale_factor
 - zone_reclaim_mode
+- want_old_faultaround_pte
 
 ==============================================================
 
@@ -945,4 +946,25 @@ Allowing regular swap effectively restricts allocations to the local
 node unless explicitly overridden by memory policies or cpuset
 configurations.
 
+=============================================================
+
+want_old_faultaround_pte:
+
+By default faultaround code produces young pte. When want_old_faultaround_pte is
+set to 1, faultaround produces old ptes.
+
+During sparse file access faultaround gets more pages mapped and when all of
+them are young (default), under memory pressure, this makes vmscan swap out anon
+pages instead, or to drop other page cache pages which otherwise stay resident.
+Setting want_old_faultaround_pte to 1 avoids this.
+
+Making the faultaround ptes old can result in performance regression on some
+architectures. This is due to cycles spent in micro-faults which would take page
+walk to set young bit in the pte. One such known test that shows a regression on
+x86 is unixbench shell8. Set want_old_faultaround_pte to 1 on architectures
+which does not show this regression or if the workload shows overall performance
+benefit with old faultaround ptes.
+
+The default value is 0.
+
 ============ End of Document =================================
diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index 5c5f2184228f..689fe9b26d65 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -318,6 +318,7 @@ extern pgprot_t protection_map[16];
 #define FAULT_FLAG_USER		0x40	/* The fault originated in userspace */
 #define FAULT_FLAG_REMOTE	0x80	/* faulting for non current tsk/mm */
 #define FAULT_FLAG_INSTRUCTION  0x100	/* The fault was during an instruction fetch */
+#define FAULT_FLAG_PREFAULT_OLD 0x400   /* Make faultaround ptes old */
 
 #define FAULT_FLAG_TRACE \
 	{ FAULT_FLAG_WRITE,		"WRITE" }, \
@@ -2796,5 +2797,7 @@ void __init setup_nr_node_ids(void);
 static inline void setup_nr_node_ids(void) {}
 #endif
 
+extern int want_old_faultaround_pte;
+
 #endif /* __KERNEL__ */
 #endif /* _LINUX_MM_H */
diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
index d0259cbcb288..64e5440f3b6b 100644
--- a/kernel/sysctl.c
+++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
@@ -1550,6 +1550,15 @@ static struct ctl_table vm_table[] = {
 		.extra1		= &zero,
 		.extra2		= &one_hundred,
 	},
+	{
+		.procname       = "want_old_faultaround_pte",
+		.data           = &want_old_faultaround_pte,
+		.maxlen         = sizeof(want_old_faultaround_pte),
+		.mode           = 0644,
+		.proc_handler   = proc_dointvec_minmax,
+		.extra1         = &zero,
+		.extra2         = &one,
+	},
 #ifdef CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE
 	{
 		.procname	= "nr_hugepages",
diff --git a/mm/filemap.c b/mm/filemap.c
index 8f7513805c6a..843429e2065a 100644
--- a/mm/filemap.c
+++ b/mm/filemap.c
@@ -48,6 +48,8 @@
 
 #include <asm/mman.h>
 
+int want_old_faultaround_pte = 1;
+
 /*
  * Shared mappings implemented 30.11.1994. It's not fully working yet,
  * though.
@@ -2676,6 +2678,14 @@ repeat:
 		if (vmf->pte)
 			vmf->pte += iter.index - last_pgoff;
 		last_pgoff = iter.index;
+
+		if (want_old_faultaround_pte) {
+			if (iter.index == vmf->pgoff)
+				vmf->flags &= ~FAULT_FLAG_PREFAULT_OLD;
+			else
+				vmf->flags |= FAULT_FLAG_PREFAULT_OLD;
+		}
+
 		if (alloc_set_pte(vmf, NULL, page))
 			goto unlock;
 		unlock_page(page);
diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
index 5c5df53dbdf9..cf8411653084 100644
--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -3455,6 +3455,10 @@ vm_fault_t alloc_set_pte(struct vm_fault *vmf, struct mem_cgroup *memcg,
 	entry = mk_pte(page, vma->vm_page_prot);
 	if (write)
 		entry = maybe_mkwrite(pte_mkdirty(entry), vma);
+
+	if (vmf->flags & FAULT_FLAG_PREFAULT_OLD)
+		entry = pte_mkold(entry);
+
 	/* copy-on-write page */
 	if (write && !(vma->vm_flags & VM_SHARED)) {
 		inc_mm_counter_fast(vma->vm_mm, MM_ANONPAGES);