diff --git a/mm/sparse.c b/mm/sparse.c
index 3abc8cc..691544a 100644
--- a/mm/sparse.c
+++ b/mm/sparse.c
@@ -740,6 +740,15 @@ static void clear_hwpoisoned_pages(struct page *memmap, int nr_pages)
 	if (!memmap)
 		return;
 
+	/*
+	 * A further optimization is to have per section refcounted
+	 * num_poisoned_pages.  But that would need more space per memmap, so
+	 * for now just do a quick global check to speed up this routine in the
+	 * absence of bad pages.
+	 */
+	if (atomic_long_read(&num_poisoned_pages) == 0)
+		return;
+
 	for (i = 0; i < nr_pages; i++) {
 		if (PageHWPoison(&memmap[i])) {
 			atomic_long_sub(1, &num_poisoned_pages);