It can probably be merged piece by piece, so it won't be a problem.
The reason he wrote the full patch series out like this, is because he wanted to measure the speed gains. Without significant speed gains it would be difficult to convince the kernel developers to make a big uncomfortable change like this.
> The reason he wrote the full patch series out like this, is because he wanted to measure the speed gains.
More importantly, because a lot of the patches involve moving code between files, or making batch changes to a large number of files at once. Evaluating these sorts of changes for correctness is a lot easier when the changes are isolated.
The reason he wrote the full patch series out like this, is because he wanted to measure the speed gains. Without significant speed gains it would be difficult to convince the kernel developers to make a big uncomfortable change like this.