sched/numa: Set the scan rate proportional to the memory usage of the task being scanned

The NUMA PTE scan rate is controlled with a combination of the
numa_balancing_scan_period_min, numa_balancing_scan_period_max and
numa_balancing_scan_size. This scan rate is independent of the size
of the task and as an aside it is further complicated by the fact that
numa_balancing_scan_size controls how many pages are marked pte_numa and
not how much virtual memory is scanned.

In combination, it is almost impossible to meaningfully tune the min and
max scan periods and reasoning about performance is complex when the time
to complete a full scan is is partially a function of the tasks memory
size. This patch alters the semantic of the min and max tunables to be
about tuning the length time it takes to complete a scan of a tasks occupied
virtual address space. Conceptually this is a lot easier to understand. There
is a "sanity" check to ensure the scan rate is never extremely fast based on
the amount of virtual memory that should be scanned in a second. The default
of 2.5G seems arbitrary but it is to have the maximum scan rate after the
patch roughly match the maximum scan rate before the patch was applied.

On a similar note, numa_scan_period is in milliseconds and not
jiffies. Properly placed pages slow the scanning rate but adding 10 jiffies
to numa_scan_period means that the rate scanning slows depends on HZ which
is confusing. Get rid of the jiffies_to_msec conversion and treat it as ms.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Srikar Dronamraju <srikar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-18-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
index 1428c66..8cd7e5f 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
@@ -403,15 +403,16 @@ workload pattern changes and minimises performance impact due to remote
 memory accesses. These sysctls control the thresholds for scan delays and
 the number of pages scanned.
 
-numa_balancing_scan_period_min_ms is the minimum delay in milliseconds
-between scans. It effectively controls the maximum scanning rate for
-each task.
+numa_balancing_scan_period_min_ms is the minimum time in milliseconds to
+scan a tasks virtual memory. It effectively controls the maximum scanning
+rate for each task.
 
 numa_balancing_scan_delay_ms is the starting "scan delay" used for a task
 when it initially forks.
 
-numa_balancing_scan_period_max_ms is the maximum delay between scans. It
-effectively controls the minimum scanning rate for each task.
+numa_balancing_scan_period_max_ms is the maximum time in milliseconds to
+scan a tasks virtual memory. It effectively controls the minimum scanning
+rate for each task.
 
 numa_balancing_scan_size_mb is how many megabytes worth of pages are
 scanned for a given scan.