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Marco Elver 4f612ed3f7 kfence: default to dynamic branch instead of static keys mode
We have observed that on very large machines with newer CPUs, the static
key/branch switching delay is on the order of milliseconds.  This is due
to the required broadcast IPIs, which simply does not scale well to
hundreds of CPUs (cores).  If done too frequently, this can adversely
affect tail latencies of various workloads.

One workaround is to increase the sample interval to several seconds,
while decreasing sampled allocation coverage, but the problem still
exists and could still increase tail latencies.

As already noted in the Kconfig help text, there are trade-offs: at
lower sample intervals the dynamic branch results in better performance;
however, at very large sample intervals, the static keys mode can result
in better performance -- careful benchmarking is recommended.

Our initial benchmarking showed that with large enough sample intervals
and workloads stressing the allocator, the static keys mode was slightly
better.  Evaluating and observing the possible system-wide side-effects
of the static-key-switching induced broadcast IPIs, however, was a blind
spot (in particular on large machines with 100s of cores).

Therefore, a major downside of the static keys mode is, unfortunately,
that it is hard to predict performance on new system architectures and
topologies, but also making conclusions about performance of new
workloads based on a limited set of benchmarks.

Most distributions will simply select the defaults, while targeting a
large variety of different workloads and system architectures.  As such,
the better default is CONFIG_KFENCE_STATIC_KEYS=n, and re-enabling it is
only recommended after careful evaluation.

For reference, on x86-64 the condition in kfence_alloc() generates
exactly
2 instructions in the kmem_cache_alloc() fast-path:

 | ...
 | cmpl   $0x0,0x1a8021c(%rip)  # ffffffff82d560d0 <kfence_allocation_gate>
 | je     ffffffff812d6003      <kmem_cache_alloc+0x243>
 | ...

which, given kfence_allocation_gate is infrequently modified, should be
well predicted by most CPUs.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20211019102524.2807208-2-elver@google.com
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Cc: Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com>
Cc: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
arch mm: remove HARDENED_USERCOPY_FALLBACK 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
block block-5.15-2021-10-29 2021-10-29 11:10:29 -07:00
certs certs: Add support for using elliptic curve keys for signing modules 2021-08-23 19:55:42 +03:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2021-08-30 12:57:10 -07:00
Documentation kfence: default to dynamic branch instead of static keys mode 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
drivers include/linux/mm.h: move nr_free_buffer_pages from swap.h to mm.h 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
fs mm, thp: fix incorrect unmap behavior for private pages 2021-11-06 13:30:41 -07:00
include kfence: always use static branches to guard kfence_alloc() 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
init memblock: use memblock_free for freeing virtual pointers 2021-11-06 13:30:41 -07:00
ipc ipc: remove memcg accounting for sops objects in do_semtimedop() 2021-09-14 10:22:11 -07:00
kernel stacktrace: move filter_irq_stacks() to kernel/stacktrace.c 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
lib kfence: default to dynamic branch instead of static keys mode 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES/dual/CC-BY-4.0: Git rid of "smart quotes" 2021-07-15 06:31:24 -06:00
mm kfence: always use static branches to guard kfence_alloc() 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
net include/linux/mm.h: move nr_free_buffer_pages from swap.h to mm.h 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
samples samples/bpf: Relicense bpf_insn.h as GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause 2021-09-29 16:03:55 +02:00
scripts Compiler Attributes: add __alloc_size() for better bounds checking 2021-11-06 13:30:33 -07:00
security mm: remove HARDENED_USERCOPY_FALLBACK 2021-11-06 13:30:43 -07:00
sound ALSA: usb-audio: Fix microphone sound on Jieli webcam. 2021-10-19 08:07:01 +02:00
tools mm/memory_hotplug: remove CONFIG_MEMORY_HOTPLUG_SPARSE 2021-11-06 13:30:42 -07:00
usr .gitignore: prefix local generated files with a slash 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
virt KVM: Remove tlbs_dirty 2021-09-23 11:01:12 -04:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2021-05-12 23:32:39 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore only top-level modules.builtin 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
.mailmap mailmap: add Andrej Shadura 2021-10-18 20:22:03 -10:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: Move Daniel Drake to credits 2021-09-21 08:34:58 +03:00
Kbuild kbuild: rename hostprogs-y/always to hostprogs/always-y 2020-02-04 01:53:07 +09:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS drm fixes for 5.15 final 2021-10-28 12:17:01 -07:00
Makefile Compiler Attributes: add __alloc_size() for better bounds checking 2021-11-06 13:30:33 -07:00
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.