linux/include
Mel Gorman bbbecb35a4 mm/page_alloc: delete vm.percpu_pagelist_fraction
Patch series "Calculate pcp->high based on zone sizes and active CPUs", v2.

The per-cpu page allocator (PCP) is meant to reduce contention on the zone
lock but the sizing of batch and high is archaic and neither takes the
zone size into account or the number of CPUs local to a zone.  With larger
zones and more CPUs per node, the contention is getting worse.
Furthermore, the fact that vm.percpu_pagelist_fraction adjusts both batch
and high values means that the sysctl can reduce zone lock contention but
also increase allocation latencies.

This series disassociates pcp->high from pcp->batch and then scales
pcp->high based on the size of the local zone with limited impact to
reclaim and accounting for active CPUs but leaves pcp->batch static.  It
also adapts the number of pages that can be on the pcp list based on
recent freeing patterns.

The motivation is partially to adjust to larger memory sizes but is also
driven by the fact that large batches of page freeing via release_pages()
often shows zone contention as a major part of the problem.  Another is a
bug report based on an older kernel where a multi-terabyte process can
takes several minutes to exit.  A workaround was to use
vm.percpu_pagelist_fraction to increase the pcp->high value but testing
indicated that a production workload could not use the same values because
of an increase in allocation latencies.  Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce
this test case myself as the multi-terabyte machines are in active use but
it should alleviate the problem.

The series aims to address both and partially acts as a pre-requisite.
pcp only works with order-0 which is useless for SLUB (when using high
orders) and THP (unconditionally).  To store high-order pages on PCP, the
pcp->high values need to be increased first.

This patch (of 6):

The vm.percpu_pagelist_fraction is used to increase the batch and high
limits for the per-cpu page allocator (PCP).  The intent behind the sysctl
is to reduce zone lock acquisition when allocating/freeing pages but it
has a problem.  While it can decrease contention, it can also increase
latency on the allocation side due to unreasonably large batch sizes.
This leads to games where an administrator adjusts
percpu_pagelist_fraction on the fly to work around contention and
allocation latency problems.

This series aims to alleviate the problems with zone lock contention while
avoiding the allocation-side latency problems.  For the purposes of
review, it's easier to remove this sysctl now and reintroduce a similar
sysctl later in the series that deals only with pcp->high.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210525080119.5455-1-mgorman@techsingularity.net
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210525080119.5455-2-mgorman@techsingularity.net
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Hillf Danton <hdanton@sina.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2021-06-29 10:53:54 -07:00
..
acpi
asm-generic mm: define default MAX_PTRS_PER_* in include/pgtable.h 2021-06-29 10:53:53 -07:00
clocksource
crypto
drm
dt-bindings dt-bindings: connector: Add PD rev 2.0 VDO definition 2021-06-04 11:43:01 +02:00
keys integrity-v5.13 2021-05-01 15:32:18 -07:00
kunit kunit: make test->lock irq safe 2021-06-29 10:53:46 -07:00
kvm
linux mm/page_alloc: delete vm.percpu_pagelist_fraction 2021-06-29 10:53:54 -07:00
math-emu
media media updates for v5.13-rc1 2021-04-28 09:24:36 -07:00
memory
misc
net net: inline function get_net_ns_by_fd if NET_NS is disabled 2021-06-15 11:00:45 -07:00
pcmcia
ras
rdma
scsi SCSI misc on 20210428 2021-04-28 17:22:10 -07:00
soc Networking changes for 5.13. 2021-04-29 11:57:23 -07:00
sound ASoC: Fixes for v5.13 2021-05-25 08:58:01 +02:00
target
trace mm, tracing: unify PFN format strings 2021-06-29 10:53:52 -07:00
uapi userfaultfd: uapi: fix UFFDIO_CONTINUE ioctl request definition 2021-06-25 10:53:26 -07:00
vdso
video
xen xen/arm: move xen_swiotlb_detect to arm/swiotlb-xen.h 2021-05-14 15:52:05 +02:00