Patch series "mm/cma: manage the memory of the CMA area by using the
ZONE_MOVABLE", v2.
0. History
This patchset is the follow-up of the discussion about the "Introduce
ZONE_CMA (v7)" [1]. Please reference it if more information is needed.
1. What does this patch do?
This patch changes the management way for the memory of the CMA area in
the MM subsystem. Currently the memory of the CMA area is managed by
the zone where their pfn is belong to. However, this approach has some
problems since MM subsystem doesn't have enough logic to handle the
situation that different characteristic memories are in a single zone.
To solve this issue, this patch try to manage all the memory of the CMA
area by using the MOVABLE zone. In MM subsystem's point of view,
characteristic of the memory on the MOVABLE zone and the memory of the
CMA area are the same. So, managing the memory of the CMA area by using
the MOVABLE zone will not have any problem.
2. Motivation
There are some problems with current approach. See following. Although
these problem would not be inherent and it could be fixed without this
conception change, it requires many hooks addition in various code path
and it would be intrusive to core MM and would be really error-prone.
Therefore, I try to solve them with this new approach. Anyway,
following is the problems of the current implementation.
o CMA memory utilization
First, following is the freepage calculation logic in MM.
- For movable allocation: freepage = total freepage
- For unmovable allocation: freepage = total freepage - CMA freepage
Freepages on the CMA area is used after the normal freepages in the zone
where the memory of the CMA area is belong to are exhausted. At that
moment that the number of the normal freepages is zero, so
- For movable allocation: freepage = total freepage = CMA freepage
- For unmovable allocation: freepage = 0
If unmovable allocation comes at this moment, allocation request would
fail to pass the watermark check and reclaim is started. After reclaim,
there would exist the normal freepages so freepages on the CMA areas
would not be used.
FYI, there is another attempt [2] trying to solve this problem in lkml.
And, as far as I know, Qualcomm also has out-of-tree solution for this
problem.
Useless reclaim:
There is no logic to distinguish CMA pages in the reclaim path. Hence,
CMA page is reclaimed even if the system just needs the page that can be
usable for the kernel allocation.
Atomic allocation failure:
This is also related to the fallback allocation policy for the memory of
the CMA area. Consider the situation that the number of the normal
freepages is *zero* since the bunch of the movable allocation requests
come. Kswapd would not be woken up due to following freepage
calculation logic.
- For movable allocation: freepage = total freepage = CMA freepage
If atomic unmovable allocation request comes at this moment, it would
fails due to following logic.
- For unmovable allocation: freepage = total freepage - CMA freepage = 0
It was reported by Aneesh [3].
Useless compaction:
Usual high-order allocation request is unmovable allocation request and
it cannot be served from the memory of the CMA area. In compaction,
migration scanner try to migrate the page in the CMA area and make
high-order page there. As mentioned above, it cannot be usable for the
unmovable allocation request so it's just waste.
3. Current approach and new approach
Current approach is that the memory of the CMA area is managed by the
zone where their pfn is belong to. However, these memory should be
distinguishable since they have a strong limitation. So, they are
marked as MIGRATE_CMA in pageblock flag and handled specially. However,
as mentioned in section 2, the MM subsystem doesn't have enough logic to
deal with this special pageblock so many problems raised.
New approach is that the memory of the CMA area is managed by the
MOVABLE zone. MM already have enough logic to deal with special zone
like as HIGHMEM and MOVABLE zone. So, managing the memory of the CMA
area by the MOVABLE zone just naturally work well because constraints
for the memory of the CMA area that the memory should always be
migratable is the same with the constraint for the MOVABLE zone.
There is one side-effect for the usability of the memory of the CMA
area. The use of MOVABLE zone is only allowed for a request with
GFP_HIGHMEM && GFP_MOVABLE so now the memory of the CMA area is also
only allowed for this gfp flag. Before this patchset, a request with
GFP_MOVABLE can use them. IMO, It would not be a big issue since most
of GFP_MOVABLE request also has GFP_HIGHMEM flag. For example, file
cache page and anonymous page. However, file cache page for blockdev
file is an exception. Request for it has no GFP_HIGHMEM flag. There is
pros and cons on this exception. In my experience, blockdev file cache
pages are one of the top reason that causes cma_alloc() to fail
temporarily. So, we can get more guarantee of cma_alloc() success by
discarding this case.
Note that there is no change in admin POV since this patchset is just
for internal implementation change in MM subsystem. Just one minor
difference for admin is that the memory stat for CMA area will be
printed in the MOVABLE zone. That's all.
4. Result
Following is the experimental result related to utilization problem.
8 CPUs, 1024 MB, VIRTUAL MACHINE
make -j16
<Before>
CMA area: 0 MB 512 MB
Elapsed-time: 92.4 186.5
pswpin: 82 18647
pswpout: 160 69839
<After>
CMA : 0 MB 512 MB
Elapsed-time: 93.1 93.4
pswpin: 84 46
pswpout: 183 92
akpm: "kernel test robot" reported a 26% improvement in
vm-scalability.throughput:
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180330012721.GA3845@yexl-desktop
[1]: lkml.kernel.org/r/1491880640-9944-1-git-send-email-iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com
[2]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/15/623
[3]: http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mm/msg100562.html
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1512114786-5085-2-git-send-email-iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com
Signed-off-by: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Reviewed-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Tested-by: Tony Lindgren <tony@atomide.com>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Laura Abbott <lauraa@codeaurora.org>
Cc: Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@samsung.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@mina86.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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