On Thu 21-03-13 11:55:16, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > * Russ Anderson <rja@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > When booting on a large memory system, the kernel spends > > considerable time in memmap_init_zone() setting up memory zones. > > Analysis shows significant time spent in __early_pfn_to_nid(). > > > > The routine memmap_init_zone() checks each PFN to verify the > > nid is valid. __early_pfn_to_nid() sequentially scans the list of > > pfn ranges to find the right range and returns the nid. This does > > not scale well. On a 4 TB (single rack) system there are 308 > > memory ranges to scan. The higher the PFN the more time spent > > sequentially spinning through memory ranges. > > > > Since memmap_init_zone() increments pfn, it will almost always be > > looking for the same range as the previous pfn, so check that > > range first. If it is in the same range, return that nid. > > If not, scan the list as before. > > > > A 4 TB (single rack) UV1 system takes 512 seconds to get through > > the zone code. This performance optimization reduces the time > > by 189 seconds, a 36% improvement. > > > > A 2 TB (single rack) UV2 system goes from 212.7 seconds to 99.8 seconds, > > a 112.9 second (53%) reduction. > > Nice speedup! > > A minor nit, in addition to Andrew's suggestion about wrapping > __early_pfn_to_nid(): > > > Index: linux/mm/page_alloc.c > > =================================================================== > > --- linux.orig/mm/page_alloc.c 2013-03-18 10:52:11.510988843 -0500 > > +++ linux/mm/page_alloc.c 2013-03-18 10:52:14.214931348 -0500 > > @@ -4161,10 +4161,19 @@ int __meminit __early_pfn_to_nid(unsigne > > { > > unsigned long start_pfn, end_pfn; > > int i, nid; > > + static unsigned long last_start_pfn, last_end_pfn; > > + static int last_nid; > > Please move these globals out of function local scope, to make it more > apparent that they are not on-stack. I only noticed it in the second pass. Wouldn't this just add more confision with other _pfn variables? (e.g. {min,max}_low_pfn and others) IMO the local scope is more obvious as this is and should only be used for caching purposes. -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>