linux/mm
Mel Gorman 444eb2a449 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>
2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
..
kasan kasan: add functions to clear stack poison 2016-03-09 15:43:42 -08:00
backing-dev.c mm/backing-dev.c: fix error path in wb_init() 2016-02-11 18:35:48 -08:00
balloon_compaction.c virtio_balloon: fix race between migration and ballooning 2016-01-12 20:47:06 +02:00
bootmem.c x86/mm: Introduce max_possible_pfn 2015-12-06 12:46:31 +01:00
cleancache.c cleancache: constify cleancache_ops structure 2016-01-27 09:09:57 -05:00
cma_debug.c mm/cma_debug: correct size input to bitmap function 2015-07-17 16:39:54 -07:00
cma.c mm/cma.c: suppress warning 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
cma.h mm: cma: mark cma_bitmap_maxno() inline in header 2015-08-14 15:56:32 -07:00
compaction.c mm, kswapd: replace kswapd compaction with waking up kcompactd 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
debug.c mm, debug: move bad flags printing to bad_page() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
dmapool.c mm, page_alloc: distinguish between being unable to sleep, unwilling to sleep and avoiding waking kswapd 2015-11-06 17:50:42 -08:00
early_ioremap.c mm/early_ioremap: use offset_in_page macro 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
fadvise.c writeback: implement and use inode_congested() 2015-06-02 08:33:35 -06:00
failslab.c mm: fault-inject take over bootstrap kmem_cache check 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
filemap.c mm: remove unnecessary uses of lock_page_memcg() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
frame_vector.c mm: fix docbook comment for get_vaddr_frames() 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
frontswap.c frontswap: allow multiple backends 2015-06-24 17:49:45 -07:00
gup.c mm: retire GUP WARN_ON_ONCE that outlived its usefulness 2016-02-03 08:57:14 -08:00
highmem.c
huge_memory.c mm: thp: set THP defrag by default to madvise and add a stall-free defrag option 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
hugetlb_cgroup.c mm: make compound_head() robust 2015-11-06 17:50:42 -08:00
hugetlb.c mm/hugetlb: use EOPNOTSUPP in hugetlb sysctl handlers 2016-03-09 15:43:42 -08:00
hwpoison-inject.c hwpoison: use page_cgroup_ino for filtering by memcg 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
init-mm.c
internal.h mm, kswapd: replace kswapd compaction with waking up kcompactd 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
interval_tree.c mm: replace vma->sharead.linear with vma->shared 2015-02-10 14:30:31 -08:00
Kconfig mm/Kconfig: remove redundant arch depend for memory hotplug 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
Kconfig.debug mm/page_poisoning.c: allow for zero poisoning 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
kmemcheck.c mm: kmemcheck skip object if slab allocation failed 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
kmemleak-test.c
kmemleak.c Revert "gfp: add __GFP_NOACCOUNT" 2016-01-14 16:00:49 -08:00
ksm.c mm/ksm.c: mark stable page dirty 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
list_lru.c mm: memcontrol: move kmem accounting code to CONFIG_MEMCG 2016-01-20 17:09:18 -08:00
maccess.c mm/maccess.c: actually return -EFAULT from strncpy_from_unsafe 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
madvise.c mm/madvise: update comment on sys_madvise() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
Makefile mm/page_poison.c: enable PAGE_POISONING as a separate option 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
memblock.c mm/memblock.c: remove unnecessary memblock_type variable 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
memcontrol.c mm: workingset: make shadow node shrinker memcg aware 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
memory_hotplug.c mm, memory hotplug: small cleanup in online_pages() 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
memory-failure.c mm/memory-failure.c: remove useless "undef"s 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
memory.c mm: cleanup *pte_alloc* interfaces 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
mempolicy.c mm/mempolicy.c: skip VM_HUGETLB and VM_MIXEDMAP VMA for lazy mbind 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
mempool.c mm, mempool: only set __GFP_NOMEMALLOC if there are free elements 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
memtest.c memtest: remove unused header files 2015-09-08 15:35:28 -07:00
migrate.c mm/thp/migration: switch from flush_tlb_range to flush_pmd_tlb_range 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
mincore.c thp: change pmd_trans_huge_lock() interface to return ptl 2016-01-21 17:20:51 -08:00
mlock.c mm: fix mlock accouting 2016-01-21 17:20:51 -08:00
mm_init.c mm: meminit: remove mminit_verify_page_links 2015-06-30 19:44:56 -07:00
mmap.c mm: deduplicate memory overcommitment code 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
mmu_context.c
mmu_notifier.c mmu-notifier: add clear_young callback 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
mmzone.c mm/mmzone.c: memmap_valid_within() can be boolean 2016-01-14 16:00:49 -08:00
mprotect.c mm, dax: check for pmd_none() after split_huge_pmd() 2016-02-11 18:35:48 -08:00
mremap.c mm: cleanup *pte_alloc* interfaces 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
msync.c mm/msync: use offset_in_page macro 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
nobootmem.c x86/mm: Introduce max_possible_pfn 2015-12-06 12:46:31 +01:00
nommu.c mm: deduplicate memory overcommitment code 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
oom_kill.c mm: oom_kill: don't ignore oom score on exiting tasks 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
page_alloc.c mm: thp: set THP defrag by default to madvise and add a stall-free defrag option 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
page_counter.c mm: page_counter: let page_counter_try_charge() return bool 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
page_ext.c mm/page_poisoning.c: allow for zero poisoning 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
page_idle.c mm: add page_check_address_transhuge() helper 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
page_io.c fs: use helper bio_add_page() instead of open coding on bi_io_vec 2015-08-13 12:32:00 -06:00
page_isolation.c mm/page_isolation: do some cleanup in "undo_isolate_page_range" 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
page_owner.c mm, page_owner: dump page owner info from dump_page() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
page_poison.c mm/page_poisoning.c: allow for zero poisoning 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
page-writeback.c mm: remove unnecessary uses of lock_page_memcg() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
pagewalk.c thp: rename split_huge_page_pmd() to split_huge_pmd() 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
percpu-km.c
percpu-vm.c
percpu.c tree wide: use kvfree() than conditional kfree()/vfree() 2016-01-22 17:02:18 -08:00
pgtable-generic.c mm/thp/migration: switch from flush_tlb_range to flush_pmd_tlb_range 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
process_vm_access.c ptrace: use fsuid, fsgid, effective creds for fs access checks 2016-01-20 17:09:18 -08:00
quicklist.c
readahead.c mm: move lru_to_page to mm_inline.h 2016-01-14 16:00:49 -08:00
rmap.c mm: simplify lock_page_memcg() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
shmem.c mm: migrate: do not touch page->mem_cgroup of live pages 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
slab_common.c mm: memcontrol: zap memcg_kmem_online helper 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
slab.c mm: thp: set THP defrag by default to madvise and add a stall-free defrag option 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
slab.h mm: memcontrol: report slab usage in cgroup2 memory.stat 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
slob.c mm: slab: free kmem_cache_node after destroy sysfs file 2016-02-18 16:23:24 -08:00
slub.c mm: thp: set THP defrag by default to madvise and add a stall-free defrag option 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
sparse-vmemmap.c x86, mm: introduce vmem_altmap to augment vmemmap_populate() 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
sparse.c x86, mm: introduce vmem_altmap to augment vmemmap_populate() 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
swap_cgroup.c
swap_state.c mm: memcontrol: charge swap to cgroup2 2016-01-20 17:09:18 -08:00
swap.c mm, x86: get_user_pages() for dax mappings 2016-01-15 17:56:32 -08:00
swapfile.c wrappers for ->i_mutex access 2016-01-22 18:04:28 -05:00
truncate.c mm: remove unnecessary uses of lock_page_memcg() 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
userfaultfd.c mm: cleanup *pte_alloc* interfaces 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
util.c mm: deduplicate memory overcommitment code 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
vmacache.c mm/vmacache: inline vmacache_valid_mm() 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
vmalloc.c mm/vmalloc: query dynamic DEBUG_PAGEALLOC setting 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
vmpressure.c mm/vmpressure.c: fix subtree pressure detection 2016-02-03 08:28:43 -08:00
vmscan.c mm: vmscan: pass root_mem_cgroup instead of NULL to memcg aware shrinker 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
vmstat.c thp, vmstats: count deferred split events 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
workingset.c mm: workingset: make shadow node shrinker memcg aware 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
zbud.c mm/zbud.c: use list_last_entry() instead of list_tail_entry() 2016-01-15 11:40:52 -08:00
zpool.c mm: zsmalloc: constify struct zs_pool name 2015-11-06 17:50:42 -08:00
zsmalloc.c zsmalloc: fix migrate_zspage-zs_free race condition 2016-01-20 17:09:18 -08:00
zswap.c mm/zswap: change incorrect strncmp use to strcmp 2015-12-18 14:25:40 -08:00