This patch is based on some of my work combined with some suggestions/patches given by Oleg Nesterov. The main goal here is to add a prctl switch to allow us to disable to THP on a per mm_struct basis. Changes for v3: * Pulled in Oleg's idea to use mm->def_flags and the VM_NOHUGEPAGE flag, which will get copied down to each vm, instead of adding in a whole new MMF_THP_DISABLE flag to mm->flags. This also creates a VM_INIT_DEF_MASK which allows the VM_NOHUGEPAGE flag to get carried down from def_flags. - Main benefit of implementing the flag this way is that, if a user specifically requests THP via madvise, that request can still be respected in vmas where necessary; however, for all other vmas we can have THP turned off. - This also prevents us from having to check for a new flag in multiple locations, since the VM_NOHUGEPAGE flag is already respected wherever necessary. * Made some adjustments to the way that the prctl call returns information, made sure to return -EINVAL when unnecessary arguments are passed for PRCTL_GET/SET_THP_DISABLE. * Reverted/added some code for s390 arch that was needed to get the VM_INIT_DEF_MASK idea working. The main motivation behind this patch is to provide a way to disable THP for jobs where the code cannot be modified, and using a malloc hook with madvise is not an option (i.e. statically allocated data). This patch allows us to do just that, without affecting other jobs running on the system. We need to do this sort of thing for jobs where THP hurts performance, due to the possibility of increased remote memory accesses that can be created by situations such as the following: When you touch 1 byte of an untouched, contiguous 2MB chunk, a THP will be handed out, and the THP will be stuck on whatever node the chunk was originally referenced from. If many remote nodes need to do work on that same chunk, they'll be making remote accesses. With THP disabled, 4K pages can be handed out to separate nodes as they're needed, greatly reducing the amount of remote accesses to memory. First with the flag unset: # perf stat -a ./prctl_wrapper_mmv3 0 ./thp_pthread -C 0 -m 0 -c 512 -b 256g Setting thp_disabled for this task... thp_disable: 0 Set thp_disabled state to 0 Process pid = 18027 PF/ MAX MIN TOTCPU/ TOT_PF/ TOT_PF/ WSEC/ TYPE: CPUS WALL WALL SYS USER TOTCPU CPU WALL_SEC SYS_SEC CPU NODES 512 1.120 0.060 0.000 0.110 0.110 0.000 28571428864 -9223372036854775808 55803572 23 Performance counter stats for './prctl_wrapper_mmv3_hack 0 ./thp_pthread -C 0 -m 0 -c 512 -b 256g': 273719072.841402 task-clock # 641.026 CPUs utilized [100.00%] 1,008,986 context-switches # 0.000 M/sec [100.00%] 7,717 CPU-migrations # 0.000 M/sec [100.00%] 1,698,932 page-faults # 0.000 M/sec 355,222,544,890,379 cycles # 1.298 GHz [100.00%] 536,445,412,234,588 stalled-cycles-frontend # 151.02% frontend cycles idle [100.00%] 409,110,531,310,223 stalled-cycles-backend # 115.17% backend cycles idle [100.00%] 148,286,797,266,411 instructions # 0.42 insns per cycle # 3.62 stalled cycles per insn [100.00%] 27,061,793,159,503 branches # 98.867 M/sec [100.00%] 1,188,655,196 branch-misses # 0.00% of all branches 427.001706337 seconds time elapsed Now with the flag set: # perf stat -a ./prctl_wrapper_mmv3 1 ./thp_pthread -C 0 -m 0 -c 512 -b 256g Setting thp_disabled for this task... thp_disable: 1 Set thp_disabled state to 1 Process pid = 144957 PF/ MAX MIN TOTCPU/ TOT_PF/ TOT_PF/ WSEC/ TYPE: CPUS WALL WALL SYS USER TOTCPU CPU WALL_SEC SYS_SEC CPU NODES 512 0.620 0.260 0.250 0.320 0.570 0.001 51612901376 128000000000 100806448 23 Performance counter stats for './prctl_wrapper_mmv3_hack 1 ./thp_pthread -C 0 -m 0 -c 512 -b 256g': 138789390.540183 task-clock # 641.959 CPUs utilized [100.00%] 534,205 context-switches # 0.000 M/sec [100.00%] 4,595 CPU-migrations # 0.000 M/sec [100.00%] 63,133,119 page-faults # 0.000 M/sec 147,977,747,269,768 cycles # 1.066 GHz [100.00%] 200,524,196,493,108 stalled-cycles-frontend # 135.51% frontend cycles idle [100.00%] 105,175,163,716,388 stalled-cycles-backend # 71.07% backend cycles idle [100.00%] 180,916,213,503,160 instructions # 1.22 insns per cycle # 1.11 stalled cycles per insn [100.00%] 26,999,511,005,868 branches # 194.536 M/sec [100.00%] 714,066,351 branch-misses # 0.00% of all branches 216.196778807 seconds time elapsed As with previous versions of the patch, We're getting about a 2x performance increase here. Here's a link to the test case I used, along with the little wrapper to activate the flag: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/memtests/thp_pthread_mmprctlv3.tar.gz Let me know if anybody has any further suggestions here. Thanks! Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jiang Liu <liuj97@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx> Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Robin Holt <holt@xxxxxxx> Cc: linux390@xxxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-fsdevel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-s390@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Alex Thorlton (3): Revert "thp: make MADV_HUGEPAGE check for mm->def_flags" Add VM_INIT_DEF_MASK and PRCTL_THP_DISABLE exec: kill the unnecessary mm->def_flags setting in load_elf_binary() arch/s390/mm/pgtable.c | 3 +++ fs/binfmt_elf.c | 4 ---- include/linux/mm.h | 2 ++ include/uapi/linux/prctl.h | 3 +++ kernel/fork.c | 11 ++++++++--- kernel/sys.c | 17 +++++++++++++++++ mm/huge_memory.c | 4 ---- 7 files changed, 33 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) -- 1.7.12.4 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html