linux/Documentation
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
..
ABI [media] media: rc: nuvoton: switch attribute wakeup_data to text 2016-03-05 08:22:03 -03:00
DocBook [media] V4L: add Y12I, Y8I and Z16 pixel format documentation 2016-03-03 06:29:42 -03:00
EDID
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arm ARM: SoC multiplatform code changes for v4.5 2016-01-20 18:03:56 -08:00
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00-INDEX
BUG-HUNTING
Changes
CodeOfConflict
CodingStyle
DMA-API-HOWTO.txt dma-mapping: always provide the dma_map_ops based implementation 2016-01-20 17:09:18 -08:00
DMA-API.txt
DMA-ISA-LPC.txt
DMA-attributes.txt
HOWTO
IPMI.txt
IRQ-affinity.txt
IRQ-domain.txt
IRQ.txt
Intel-IOMMU.txt iommu/vt-d: Fix link to Intel IOMMU Specification 2016-01-29 12:32:12 +01:00
Makefile
ManagementStyle
SAK.txt
SM501.txt
SecurityBugs
SubmitChecklist
SubmittingDrivers
SubmittingPatches
VGA-softcursor.txt
adding-syscalls.txt
applying-patches.txt
assoc_array.txt
atomic_ops.txt
bad_memory.txt
basic_profiling.txt
bcache.txt
binfmt_misc.txt
braille-console.txt
bt8xxgpio.txt
btmrvl.txt
bus-virt-phys-mapping.txt
cachetlb.txt
cgroup-v2.txt mm: memcontrol: report kernel stack usage in cgroup2 memory.stat 2016-03-17 15:09:34 -07:00
circular-buffers.txt
clk.txt
coccinelle.txt
cpu-hotplug.txt
cpu-load.txt
cputopology.txt
crc32.txt
dcdbas.txt
debugging-modules.txt
debugging-via-ohci1394.txt
dell_rbu.txt
devices.txt
digsig.txt
dma-buf-sharing.txt
dontdiff
dynamic-debug-howto.txt
edac.txt
efi-stub.txt
eisa.txt
email-clients.txt
flexible-arrays.txt
futex-requeue-pi.txt
gcov.txt
gdb-kernel-debugging.txt
highuid.txt
hsi.txt
hw_random.txt
hwspinlock.txt
init.txt
initrd.txt
intel_txt.txt
io-mapping.txt
io_ordering.txt
iostats.txt
irqflags-tracing.txt
isapnp.txt
java.txt
kasan.txt
kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
kernel-docs.txt
kernel-parameters.txt Power management and ACPI material for v4.6-rc1, part 1 2016-03-16 14:10:53 -07:00
kernel-per-CPU-kthreads.txt
kmemcheck.txt
kmemleak.txt
kobject.txt
kprobes.txt
kref.txt
kselftest.txt
ldm.txt
local_ops.txt
lockup-watchdogs.txt
logo.gif
logo.txt
lzo.txt
magic-number.txt
mailbox.txt
md-cluster.txt
md.txt
memory-barriers.txt virtio: barrier rework+fixes 2016-01-18 16:44:24 -08:00
memory-hotplug.txt memory-hotplug: add automatic onlining policy for the newly added memory 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
men-chameleon-bus.txt
module-signing.txt
mono.txt
nommu-mmap.txt
ntb.txt
numastat.txt
oops-tracing.txt
padata.txt
parport-lowlevel.txt
parport.txt
percpu-rw-semaphore.txt
phy.txt
pi-futex.txt
pinctrl.txt
pnp.txt
preempt-locking.txt
printk-formats.txt mm, printk: introduce new format string for flags 2016-03-15 16:55:16 -07:00
pwm.txt
ramoops.txt
rbtree.txt
remoteproc.txt
rfkill.txt
robust-futex-ABI.txt
robust-futexes.txt
rpmsg.txt
rtc.txt rtc: implement a sysfs interface for clock offset 2016-03-14 17:08:16 +01:00
serial-console.txt
sgi-ioc4.txt
smsc_ece1099.txt
sparse.txt
stable_api_nonsense.txt
stable_kernel_rules.txt
static-keys.txt
svga.txt
sysfs-rules.txt
sysrq.txt
this_cpu_ops.txt
ubsan.txt UBSAN: run-time undefined behavior sanity checker 2016-01-20 17:09:18 -08:00
unaligned-memory-access.txt
unicode.txt
unshare.txt
vfio.txt
vgaarbiter.txt
video-output.txt
vme_api.txt
volatile-considered-harmful.txt
workqueue.txt
xillybus.txt
xz.txt
zorro.txt