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authorMel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>2016-03-17 14:19:23 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2016-03-17 15:09:34 -0700
commit444eb2a449ef36fe115431ed7b71467c4563c7f1 (patch)
tree7f1ed931b5a16599ed67968a79ec23038dd333ad /Documentation/vm
parentf9054c70d28bc214b2857cf8db8269f4f45a5e23 (diff)
downloadop-kernel-dev-444eb2a449ef36fe115431ed7b71467c4563c7f1.zip
op-kernel-dev-444eb2a449ef36fe115431ed7b71467c4563c7f1.tar.gz
mm: thp: set THP defrag by default to madvise and add a stall-free defrag option
THP defrag is enabled by default to direct reclaim/compact but not wake kswapd in the event of a THP allocation failure. The problem is that THP allocation requests potentially enter reclaim/compaction. This potentially incurs a severe stall that is not guaranteed to be offset by reduced TLB misses. While there has been considerable effort to reduce the impact of reclaim/compaction, it is still a high cost and workloads that should fit in memory fail to do so. Specifically, a simple anon/file streaming workload will enter direct reclaim on NUMA at least even though the working set size is 80% of RAM. It's been years and it's time to throw in the towel. First, this patch defines THP defrag as follows; madvise: A failed allocation will direct reclaim/compact if the application requests it never: Neither reclaim/compact nor wake kswapd defer: A failed allocation will wake kswapd/kcompactd always: A failed allocation will direct reclaim/compact (historical behaviour) khugepaged defrag will enter direct/reclaim but not wake kswapd. Next it sets the default defrag option to be "madvise" to only enter direct reclaim/compaction for applications that specifically requested it. Lastly, it removes a check from the page allocator slowpath that is related to __GFP_THISNODE to allow "defer" to work. The callers that really cares are slub/slab and they are updated accordingly. The slab one may be surprising because it also corrects a comment as kswapd was never woken up by that path. This means that a THP fault will no longer stall for most applications by default and the ideal for most users that get THP if they are immediately available. There are still options for users that prefer a stall at startup of a new application by either restoring historical behaviour with "always" or pick a half-way point with "defer" where kswapd does some of the work in the background and wakes kcompactd if necessary. THP defrag for khugepaged remains enabled and will enter direct/reclaim but no wakeup kswapd or kcompactd. After this patch a THP allocation failure will quickly fallback and rely on khugepaged to recover the situation at some time in the future. In some cases, this will reduce THP usage but the benefit of THP is hard to measure and not a universal win where as a stall to reclaim/compaction is definitely measurable and can be painful. The first test for this is using "usemem" to read a large file and write a large anonymous mapping (to avoid the zero page) multiple times. The total size of the mappings is 80% of RAM and the benchmark simply measures how long it takes to complete. It uses multiple threads to see if that is a factor. On UMA, the performance is almost identical so is not reported but on NUMA, we see this usemem 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1 nodefrag-v1r3 Amean System-1 102.86 ( 0.00%) 46.81 ( 54.50%) Amean System-4 37.85 ( 0.00%) 34.02 ( 10.12%) Amean System-7 48.12 ( 0.00%) 46.89 ( 2.56%) Amean System-12 51.98 ( 0.00%) 56.96 ( -9.57%) Amean System-21 80.16 ( 0.00%) 79.05 ( 1.39%) Amean System-30 110.71 ( 0.00%) 107.17 ( 3.20%) Amean System-48 127.98 ( 0.00%) 124.83 ( 2.46%) Amean Elapsd-1 185.84 ( 0.00%) 105.51 ( 43.23%) Amean Elapsd-4 26.19 ( 0.00%) 25.58 ( 2.33%) Amean Elapsd-7 21.65 ( 0.00%) 21.62 ( 0.16%) Amean Elapsd-12 18.58 ( 0.00%) 17.94 ( 3.43%) Amean Elapsd-21 17.53 ( 0.00%) 16.60 ( 5.33%) Amean Elapsd-30 17.45 ( 0.00%) 17.13 ( 1.84%) Amean Elapsd-48 15.40 ( 0.00%) 15.27 ( 0.82%) For a single thread, the benchmark completes 43.23% faster with this patch applied with smaller benefits as the thread increases. Similar, notice the large reduction in most cases in system CPU usage. The overall CPU time is 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1 nodefrag-v1r3 User 10357.65 10438.33 System 3988.88 3543.94 Elapsed 2203.01 1634.41 Which is substantial. Now, the reclaim figures 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1nodefrag-v1r3 Minor Faults 128458477 278352931 Major Faults 2174976 225 Swap Ins 16904701 0 Swap Outs 17359627 0 Allocation stalls 43611 0 DMA allocs 0 0 DMA32 allocs 19832646 19448017 Normal allocs 614488453 580941839 Movable allocs 0 0 Direct pages scanned 24163800 0 Kswapd pages scanned 0 0 Kswapd pages reclaimed 0 0 Direct pages reclaimed 20691346 0 Compaction stalls 42263 0 Compaction success 938 0 Compaction failures 41325 0 This patch eliminates almost all swapping and direct reclaim activity. There is still overhead but it's from NUMA balancing which does not identify that it's pointless trying to do anything with this workload. I also tried the thpscale benchmark which forces a corner case where compaction can be used heavily and measures the latency of whether base or huge pages were used thpscale Fault Latencies 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1 nodefrag-v1r3 Amean fault-base-1 5288.84 ( 0.00%) 2817.12 ( 46.73%) Amean fault-base-3 6365.53 ( 0.00%) 3499.11 ( 45.03%) Amean fault-base-5 6526.19 ( 0.00%) 4363.06 ( 33.15%) Amean fault-base-7 7142.25 ( 0.00%) 4858.08 ( 31.98%) Amean fault-base-12 13827.64 ( 0.00%) 10292.11 ( 25.57%) Amean fault-base-18 18235.07 ( 0.00%) 13788.84 ( 24.38%) Amean fault-base-24 21597.80 ( 0.00%) 24388.03 (-12.92%) Amean fault-base-30 26754.15 ( 0.00%) 19700.55 ( 26.36%) Amean fault-base-32 26784.94 ( 0.00%) 19513.57 ( 27.15%) Amean fault-huge-1 4223.96 ( 0.00%) 2178.57 ( 48.42%) Amean fault-huge-3 2194.77 ( 0.00%) 2149.74 ( 2.05%) Amean fault-huge-5 2569.60 ( 0.00%) 2346.95 ( 8.66%) Amean fault-huge-7 3612.69 ( 0.00%) 2997.70 ( 17.02%) Amean fault-huge-12 3301.75 ( 0.00%) 6727.02 (-103.74%) Amean fault-huge-18 6696.47 ( 0.00%) 6685.72 ( 0.16%) Amean fault-huge-24 8000.72 ( 0.00%) 9311.43 (-16.38%) Amean fault-huge-30 13305.55 ( 0.00%) 9750.45 ( 26.72%) Amean fault-huge-32 9981.71 ( 0.00%) 10316.06 ( -3.35%) The average time to fault pages is substantially reduced in the majority of caseds but with the obvious caveat that fewer THPs are actually used in this adverse workload 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1 nodefrag-v1r3 Percentage huge-1 0.71 ( 0.00%) 14.04 (1865.22%) Percentage huge-3 10.77 ( 0.00%) 33.05 (206.85%) Percentage huge-5 60.39 ( 0.00%) 38.51 (-36.23%) Percentage huge-7 45.97 ( 0.00%) 34.57 (-24.79%) Percentage huge-12 68.12 ( 0.00%) 40.07 (-41.17%) Percentage huge-18 64.93 ( 0.00%) 47.82 (-26.35%) Percentage huge-24 62.69 ( 0.00%) 44.23 (-29.44%) Percentage huge-30 43.49 ( 0.00%) 55.38 ( 27.34%) Percentage huge-32 50.72 ( 0.00%) 51.90 ( 2.35%) 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1nodefrag-v1r3 Minor Faults 37429143 47564000 Major Faults 1916 1558 Swap Ins 1466 1079 Swap Outs 2936863 149626 Allocation stalls 62510 3 DMA allocs 0 0 DMA32 allocs 6566458 6401314 Normal allocs 216361697 216538171 Movable allocs 0 0 Direct pages scanned 25977580 17998 Kswapd pages scanned 0 3638931 Kswapd pages reclaimed 0 207236 Direct pages reclaimed 8833714 88 Compaction stalls 103349 5 Compaction success 270 4 Compaction failures 103079 1 Note again that while this does swap as it's an aggressive workload, the direct relcim activity and allocation stalls is substantially reduced. There is some kswapd activity but ftrace showed that the kswapd activity was due to normal wakeups from 4K pages being allocated. Compaction-related stalls and activity are almost eliminated. I also tried the stutter benchmark. For this, I do not have figures for NUMA but it's something that does impact UMA so I'll report what is available stutter 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1 nodefrag-v1r3 Min mmap 7.3571 ( 0.00%) 7.3438 ( 0.18%) 1st-qrtle mmap 7.5278 ( 0.00%) 17.9200 (-138.05%) 2nd-qrtle mmap 7.6818 ( 0.00%) 21.6055 (-181.25%) 3rd-qrtle mmap 11.0889 ( 0.00%) 21.8881 (-97.39%) Max-90% mmap 27.8978 ( 0.00%) 22.1632 ( 20.56%) Max-93% mmap 28.3202 ( 0.00%) 22.3044 ( 21.24%) Max-95% mmap 28.5600 ( 0.00%) 22.4580 ( 21.37%) Max-99% mmap 29.6032 ( 0.00%) 25.5216 ( 13.79%) Max mmap 4109.7289 ( 0.00%) 4813.9832 (-17.14%) Mean mmap 12.4474 ( 0.00%) 19.3027 (-55.07%) This benchmark is trying to fault an anonymous mapping while there is a heavy IO load -- a scenario that desktop users used to complain about frequently. This shows a mix because the ideal case of mapping with THP is not hit as often. However, note that 99% of the mappings complete 13.79% faster. The CPU usage here is particularly interesting 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1nodefrag-v1r3 User 67.50 0.99 System 1327.88 91.30 Elapsed 2079.00 2128.98 And once again we look at the reclaim figures 4.4.0 4.4.0 kcompactd-v1r1nodefrag-v1r3 Minor Faults 335241922 1314582827 Major Faults 715 819 Swap Ins 0 0 Swap Outs 0 0 Allocation stalls 532723 0 DMA allocs 0 0 DMA32 allocs 1822364341 1177950222 Normal allocs 1815640808 1517844854 Movable allocs 0 0 Direct pages scanned 21892772 0 Kswapd pages scanned 20015890 41879484 Kswapd pages reclaimed 19961986 41822072 Direct pages reclaimed 21892741 0 Compaction stalls 1065755 0 Compaction success 514 0 Compaction failures 1065241 0 Allocation stalls and all direct reclaim activity is eliminated as well as compaction-related stalls. THP gives impressive gains in some cases but only if they are quickly available. We're not going to reach the point where they are completely free so lets take the costs out of the fast paths finally and defer the cost to kswapd, kcompactd and khugepaged where it belongs. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt17
1 files changed, 17 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt b/Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt
index 0dc8632..d9cb65c 100644
--- a/Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt
+++ b/Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt
@@ -113,9 +113,26 @@ guaranteed, but it may be more likely in case the allocation is for a
MADV_HUGEPAGE region.
echo always >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
+echo defer >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
echo madvise >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
echo never >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
+"always" means that an application requesting THP will stall on allocation
+failure and directly reclaim pages and compact memory in an effort to
+allocate a THP immediately. This may be desirable for virtual machines
+that benefit heavily from THP use and are willing to delay the VM start
+to utilise them.
+
+"defer" means that an application will wake kswapd in the background
+to reclaim pages and wake kcompact to compact memory so that THP is
+available in the near future. It's the responsibility of khugepaged
+to then install the THP pages later.
+
+"madvise" will enter direct reclaim like "always" but only for regions
+that are have used madvise(MADV_HUGEPAGE). This is the default behaviour.
+
+"never" should be self-explanatory.
+
By default kernel tries to use huge zero page on read page fault.
It's possible to disable huge zero page by writing 0 or enable it
back by writing 1:
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