Re: [PATCH 4/9] mm: MIGRATE_CMA migration type added

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On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 03:54:44PM +0200, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
The MIGRATE_CMA migration type has two main characteristics:
(i) only movable pages can be allocated from MIGRATE_CMA
pageblocks and (ii) page allocator will never change migration
type of MIGRATE_CMA pageblocks.

This guarantees that page in a MIGRATE_CMA page block can
always be migrated somewhere else (unless there's no memory left
in the system).

On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:08:26 -0700, Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Or the count is premanently elevated by a device driver for some reason or if
the page is backed by a filesystem with a broken or unusable migrate_page()
function. This is unavoidable, I'm just pointing out that you can stil have
migration failures, particularly if GFP_MOVABLE has been improperly used.

CMA does not handle that well right now.  I guess it's something to think about
once the rest is nice and working.

It is designed to be used with Contiguous Memory Allocator
(CMA) for allocating big chunks (eg. 10MiB) of physically
contiguous memory.  Once driver requests contiguous memory,
CMA will migrate pages from MIGRATE_CMA pageblocks.

To minimise number of migrations, MIGRATE_CMA migration type
is the last type tried when page allocator falls back to other
migration types then requested.

It would be preferable if you could figure out how to reuse the
MIGRATE_RESERVE type for just the bitmap.

I'm not entirely sure of what you mean here.

Like MIGRATE_CMA, it does not
change type except when min_free_kbytes changes. However, it is
something that could be done in the future to keep the size of the
pageblock bitmap where it is now.


+enum {
+	MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE,
+	MIGRATE_RECLAIMABLE,
+	MIGRATE_MOVABLE,
+	MIGRATE_PCPTYPES,	/* the number of types on the pcp lists */
+	MIGRATE_RESERVE = MIGRATE_PCPTYPES,
+	/*
+	 * MIGRATE_CMA migration type is designed to mimic the way
+	 * ZONE_MOVABLE works.  Only movable pages can be allocated
+	 * from MIGRATE_CMA pageblocks and page allocator never
+	 * implicitly change migration type of MIGRATE_CMA pageblock.
+	 *
+	 * The way to use it is to change migratetype of a range of
+	 * pageblocks to MIGRATE_CMA which can be done by
+	 * __free_pageblock_cma() function.  What is important though
+	 * is that a range of pageblocks must be aligned to
+	 * MAX_ORDER_NR_PAGES should biggest page be bigger then
+	 * a single pageblock.
+	 */
+	MIGRATE_CMA,

This does mean that MIGRATE_CMA also does not have a per-cpu list.
I don't know if that matters to you but all allocations using
MIGRATE_CMA will take the zone lock.

This is sort of an artefact of my misunderstanding of pcp lists in the
past.  I'll have to re-evaluate the decision not to include CMA on pcp
list.

Still, I think that CMA not being on pcp lists should not be a problem
for us.  At least we can try and get CMA running and then consider adding
CMA to pcp lists.

I'm not sure this can be easily avoided because
if there is a per-CPU list for MIGRATE_CMA, it might use a new cache
line for it and incur a different set of performance problems.

+	MIGRATE_ISOLATE,	/* can't allocate from here */
+	MIGRATE_TYPES
+};

diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c
index 97254e4..9cf6b2b 100644
--- a/mm/compaction.c
+++ b/mm/compaction.c
@@ -115,6 +115,16 @@ static bool suitable_migration_target(struct page *page)
 	if (migratetype == MIGRATE_ISOLATE || migratetype == MIGRATE_RESERVE)
 		return false;

+	/* Keep MIGRATE_CMA alone as well. */
+	/*
+	 * XXX Revisit.  We currently cannot let compaction touch CMA
+	 * pages since compaction insists on changing their migration
+	 * type to MIGRATE_MOVABLE (see split_free_page() called from
+	 * isolate_freepages_block() above).
+	 */
+	if (is_migrate_cma(migratetype))
+		return false;
+

This is another reason why CMA and compaction should be using almost
identical code. It does mean that the compact_control may need to be
renamed and get flags to control things like the setting of pageblock
flags but it would be preferable to having two almost identical pieces
of code.

I've addressed it in my other mail where I've changed the split_free_page()
to not touch CMA and ISOLATE pageblocks.  I think that this change should
make the above comment no longer accurate and the check unnecessary.

 	/* If the page is a large free page, then allow migration */
 	if (PageBuddy(page) && page_order(page) >= pageblock_order)
 		return true;

@@ -940,12 +963,12 @@ __rmqueue_fallback(struct zone *zone, int order, int start_migratetype)
 	/* Find the largest possible block of pages in the other list */
 	for (current_order = MAX_ORDER-1; current_order >= order;
 						--current_order) {
-		for (i = 0; i < MIGRATE_TYPES - 1; i++) {
+		for (i = 0; i < ARRAY_SIZE(fallbacks[0]); i++) {

I don't see why this change is necessary.

It changes a sort of a magic number into a value that is calculated
from the array.  This makes it resistant to changes in the definition
of the fallbacks array.  I think this is a reasonable change.

 			migratetype = fallbacks[start_migratetype][i];

 			/* MIGRATE_RESERVE handled later if necessary */
 			if (migratetype == MIGRATE_RESERVE)
-				continue;
+				break;

 			area = &(zone->free_area[current_order]);
 			if (list_empty(&area->free_list[migratetype]))

--
Best regards,                                         _     _
.o. | Liege of Serenely Enlightened Majesty of      o' \,=./ `o
..o | Computer Science,  Michał “mina86” Nazarewicz    (o o)
ooo +----<email/xmpp: mpn@xxxxxxxxxx>--------------ooO--(_)--Ooo--

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