This is the last VM counter that is not per-cpu or per-domain. This counter is read infrequently and written very frequently. It is only used to limit mlock() and it is checked very far from where it is adjusted so stale counters are not much of a concern.
Long term I believe mlock() pages should be counted separately. Conflating buffer cache and pte usage with user locked pages doesn't make sense. I looked at this but it was more complicated than I wanted to get into right away.
There are a couple of unusual atomics in pmap. I would like architecture owners to review these.