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Mel Gorman 1c30844d2d mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs
An external fragmentation event was previously described as

    When the page allocator fragments memory, it records the event using
    the mm_page_alloc_extfrag event. If the fallback_order is smaller
    than a pageblock order (order-9 on 64-bit x86) then it's considered
    an event that will cause external fragmentation issues in the future.

The kernel reduces the probability of such events by increasing the
watermark sizes by calling set_recommended_min_free_kbytes early in the
lifetime of the system.  This works reasonably well in general but if
there are enough sparsely populated pageblocks then the problem can still
occur as enough memory is free overall and kswapd stays asleep.

This patch introduces a watermark_boost_factor sysctl that allows a zone
watermark to be temporarily boosted when an external fragmentation causing
events occurs.  The boosting will stall allocations that would decrease
free memory below the boosted low watermark and kswapd is woken if the
calling context allows to reclaim an amount of memory relative to the size
of the high watermark and the watermark_boost_factor until the boost is
cleared.  When kswapd finishes, it wakes kcompactd at the pageblock order
to clean some of the pageblocks that may have been affected by the
fragmentation event.  kswapd avoids any writeback, slab shrinkage and swap
from reclaim context during this operation to avoid excessive system
disruption in the name of fragmentation avoidance.  Care is taken so that
kswapd will do normal reclaim work if the system is really low on memory.

This was evaluated using the same workloads as "mm, page_alloc: Spread
allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation".

1-socket Skylake machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
--------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                    18421 (98% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1      653.58 (   0.00%)      652.71 (   0.13%)
Amean     fault-huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)      178.93 * -99.00%*

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        5.12 ( 100.00%)

Note that external fragmentation causing events are massively reduced by
this path whether in comparison to the previous kernel or the vanilla
kernel.  The fault latency for huge pages appears to be increased but that
is only because THP allocations were successful with the patch applied.

1-socket Skylake machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   13464 (95% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Min       fault-base-1      912.00 (   0.00%)      905.00 (   0.77%)
Min       fault-huge-1      127.00 (   0.00%)      135.00 (  -6.30%)
Amean     fault-base-1     1467.55 (   0.00%)     1481.67 (  -0.96%)
Amean     fault-huge-1     1127.11 (   0.00%)     1063.88 *   5.61%*

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-1       77.64 (   0.00%)       83.46 (   7.49%)

As before, massive reduction in external fragmentation events, some jitter
on latencies and an increase in THP allocation success rates.

2-socket Haswell machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   14263 (93% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     1346.45 (   0.00%)     1306.87 (   2.94%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     3418.60 (   0.00%)     1348.94 (  60.54%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-5        0.78 (   0.00%)        7.91 ( 910.64%)

There is a 93% reduction in fragmentation causing events, there is a big
reduction in the huge page fault latency and allocation success rate is
higher.

2-socket Haswell machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                  11095 (93% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     6217.43 (   0.00%)     7419.67 * -19.34%*
Amean     fault-huge-5     3163.33 (   0.00%)     3263.80 (  -3.18%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-5       95.14 (   0.00%)       87.98 (  -7.53%)

There is a large reduction in fragmentation events with some jitter around
the latencies and success rates.  As before, the high THP allocation
success rate does mean the system is under a lot of pressure.  However, as
the fragmentation events are reduced, it would be expected that the
long-term allocation success rate would be higher.

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181123114528.28802-5-mgorman@techsingularity.net
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Zi Yan <zi.yan@cs.rutgers.edu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2018-12-28 12:11:48 -08:00
arch mm: convert totalram_pages and totalhigh_pages variables to atomic 2018-12-28 12:11:47 -08:00
block block: Fix null_blk_zoned creation failure with small number of zones 2018-12-11 16:19:38 -07:00
certs export.h: remove VMLINUX_SYMBOL() and VMLINUX_SYMBOL_STR() 2018-08-22 23:21:44 +09:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2018-12-27 13:53:32 -08:00
Documentation mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs 2018-12-28 12:11:48 -08:00
drivers mm/memory_hotplug: drop "online" parameter from add_memory_resource() 2018-12-28 12:11:48 -08:00
firmware kbuild: remove all dummy assignments to obj- 2017-11-18 11:46:06 +09:00
fs userfaultfd: convert userfaultfd_ctx::refcount to refcount_t 2018-12-28 12:11:47 -08:00
include mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs 2018-12-28 12:11:48 -08:00
init debugobjects: call debug_objects_mem_init eariler 2018-12-28 12:11:45 -08:00
ipc ipc: IPCMNI limit check for semmni 2018-10-31 08:54:14 -07:00
kernel mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs 2018-12-28 12:11:48 -08:00
lib mm: convert zone->managed_pages to atomic variable 2018-12-28 12:11:47 -08:00
LICENSES This is a fairly typical cycle for documentation. There's some welcome 2018-10-24 18:01:11 +01:00
mm mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs 2018-12-28 12:11:48 -08:00
net mm: convert totalram_pages and totalhigh_pages variables to atomic 2018-12-28 12:11:47 -08:00
samples Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next 2018-12-27 13:04:52 -08:00
scripts scripts/tags.sh: add more declarations 2018-12-28 12:11:44 -08:00
security mm: convert totalram_pages and totalhigh_pages variables to atomic 2018-12-28 12:11:47 -08:00
sound xen: features and fixes for 4.21 2018-12-26 11:35:07 -08:00
tools mm, devm_memremap_pages: fix shutdown handling 2018-12-28 12:11:47 -08:00
usr initramfs: move gen_initramfs_list.sh from scripts/ to usr/ 2018-08-22 23:21:44 +09:00
virt Merge branch 'core-rcu-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-12-26 13:07:19 -08:00
.clang-format page cache: Convert find_get_pages_contig to XArray 2018-10-21 10:46:34 -04:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore Kbuild updates for v4.17 (2nd) 2018-04-15 17:21:30 -07:00
.mailmap Merge tag 'nand/for-4.21' of git://git.infradead.org/linux-mtd into mtd/next 2018-12-18 19:59:16 +01:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: update entry for MMP platform 2018-12-03 12:39:57 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v4.15 2017-11-17 17:45:29 -08:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2018-12-27 13:53:32 -08:00
Makefile Linux 4.20 2018-12-23 15:55:59 -08:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.