The concurrent use of multiple hugetlb page sizes on a single system is becoming more common. One of the reasons is better TLB support for gigantic page sizes on x86 hardware. In addition, hugetlb pages are being used to back VMs in hosting environments. When using hugetlb pages to back VMs, it is often desirable to preallocate hugetlb pools. This avoids the delay and uncertainty of allocating hugetlb pages at VM startup. In addition, preallocating huge pages minimizes the issue of memory fragmentation that increases the longer the system is up and running. In such environments, a combination of larger and smaller hugetlb pages are preallocated in anticipation of backing VMs of various sizes. Over time, the preallocated pool of smaller hugetlb pages may become depleted while larger hugetlb pages still remain. In such situations, it is desirable to convert larger hugetlb pages to smaller hugetlb pages. Converting larger to smaller hugetlb pages can be accomplished today by first freeing the larger page to the buddy allocator and then allocating the smaller pages. For example, to convert 50 GB pages on x86: gb_pages=`cat .../hugepages-1048576kB/nr_hugepages` m2_pages=`cat .../hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages` echo $(($gb_pages - 50)) > .../hugepages-1048576kB/nr_hugepages echo $(($m2_pages + 25600)) > .../hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages On an idle system this operation is fairly reliable and results are as expected. The number of 2MB pages is increased as expected and the time of the operation is a second or two. However, when there is activity on the system the following issues arise: 1) This process can take quite some time, especially if allocation of the smaller pages is not immediate and requires migration/compaction. 2) There is no guarantee that the total size of smaller pages allocated will match the size of the larger page which was freed. This is because the area freed by the larger page could quickly be fragmented. In a test environment with a load that continually fills the page cache with clean pages, results such as the following can be observed: Unexpected number of 2MB pages allocated: Expected 25600, have 19944 real 0m42.092s user 0m0.008s sys 0m41.467s To address these issues, introduce the concept of hugetlb page demotion. Demotion provides a means of 'in place' splitting of a hugetlb page to pages of a smaller size. This avoids freeing pages to buddy and then trying to allocate from buddy. Page demotion is controlled via sysfs files that reside in the per-hugetlb page size and per node directories. - demote_size Target page size for demotion, a smaller huge page size. File can be written to chose a smaller huge page size if multiple are available. - demote Writable number of hugetlb pages to be demoted To demote 50 GB huge pages, one would: cat .../hugepages-1048576kB/free_hugepages /* optional, verify free pages */ cat .../hugepages-1048576kB/demote_size /* optional, verify target size */ echo 50 > .../hugepages-1048576kB/demote Only hugetlb pages which are free at the time of the request can be demoted. Demotion does not add to the complexity of surplus pages and honors reserved huge pages. Therefore, when a value is written to the sysfs demote file, that value is only the maximum number of pages which will be demoted. It is possible fewer will actually be demoted. The recently introduced per-hstate mutex is used to synchronize demote operations with other operations that modify hugetlb pools. Real world use cases -------------------- The above scenario describes a real world use case where hugetlb pages are used to back VMs on x86. Both issues of long allocation times and not necessarily getting the expected number of smaller huge pages after a free and allocate cycle have been experienced. The occurrence of these issues is dependent on other activity within the host and can not be predicted. RESEND -> v2 - Removed optimizations for vmemmap optimized pages - Make demote_size writable - Removed demote interfaces for smallest huge page size - Updated documentation and commit messages - Fixed build break for !CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_GIGANTIC_PAGE v1 -> RESEND - Rebase on next-20210816 - Fix a few typos in commit messages RFC -> v1 - Provides basic support for vmemmap optimized pages - Takes speculative page references into account - Updated Documentation file - Added optimizations for vmemmap optimized pages Mike Kravetz (4): hugetlb: add demote hugetlb page sysfs interfaces hugetlb: add HPageCma flag and code to free non-gigantic pages in CMA hugetlb: add demote bool to gigantic page routines hugetlb: add hugetlb demote page support Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst | 30 +- include/linux/hugetlb.h | 8 + mm/hugetlb.c | 332 +++++++++++++++++-- 3 files changed, 344 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-) -- 2.31.1
