Changes in version 2: o remove per-cpu counter inaccuracy noise from Changelog of kswapd NUMA fix (Andrew) o make fairness allocator work correctly with zone_reclaim_mode enabled (Andrea) o make allocation batch accounting non-atomic (Andrea) The way the page allocator interacts with kswapd creates aging imbalances, where the amount of time a userspace page gets in memory under reclaim pressure is dependent on which zone, which node the allocator took the page frame from. #1 fixes missed kswapd wakeups on NUMA systems, which lead to some nodes falling behind for a full reclaim cycle relative to the other nodes in the system #3 fixes an interaction where kswapd and a continuous stream of page allocations keep the preferred zone of a task between the high and low watermark (allocations succeed + kswapd does not go to sleep) indefinitely, completely underutilizing the lower zones and thrashing on the preferred zone The following test ran a foreground workload (memcachetest) with background IO of various sizes on a 4 node 8G system (similar results were observed with single-node 4G systems): parallelio BASE FAIRALLOC Ops memcachetest-0M 5170.00 ( 0.00%) 5283.00 ( 2.19%) Ops memcachetest-791M 4740.00 ( 0.00%) 5293.00 ( 11.67%) Ops memcachetest-2639M 2551.00 ( 0.00%) 4950.00 ( 94.04%) Ops memcachetest-4487M 2606.00 ( 0.00%) 3922.00 ( 50.50%) Ops io-duration-0M 0.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) Ops io-duration-791M 55.00 ( 0.00%) 18.00 ( 67.27%) Ops io-duration-2639M 235.00 ( 0.00%) 103.00 ( 56.17%) Ops io-duration-4487M 278.00 ( 0.00%) 173.00 ( 37.77%) Ops swaptotal-0M 0.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) Ops swaptotal-791M 245184.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) Ops swaptotal-2639M 468069.00 ( 0.00%) 108778.00 ( 76.76%) Ops swaptotal-4487M 452529.00 ( 0.00%) 76623.00 ( 83.07%) Ops swapin-0M 0.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) Ops swapin-791M 108297.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) Ops swapin-2639M 169537.00 ( 0.00%) 50031.00 ( 70.49%) Ops swapin-4487M 167435.00 ( 0.00%) 34178.00 ( 79.59%) Ops minorfaults-0M 1518666.00 ( 0.00%) 1503993.00 ( 0.97%) Ops minorfaults-791M 1676963.00 ( 0.00%) 1520115.00 ( 9.35%) Ops minorfaults-2639M 1606035.00 ( 0.00%) 1799717.00 (-12.06%) Ops minorfaults-4487M 1612118.00 ( 0.00%) 1583825.00 ( 1.76%) Ops majorfaults-0M 6.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) Ops majorfaults-791M 13836.00 ( 0.00%) 10.00 ( 99.93%) Ops majorfaults-2639M 22307.00 ( 0.00%) 6490.00 ( 70.91%) Ops majorfaults-4487M 21631.00 ( 0.00%) 4380.00 ( 79.75%) Positive percentage means improvement, negative regression. BASE FAIRALLOC User 287.78 460.97 System 2151.67 3142.51 Elapsed 9737.00 8879.34 Memcachetest, the foreground workload, runs for a fixed duration, which is why user and system time increased so much: memcachetest spends more time doing actual work and less time waiting for IO. The elapsed time came down because the background IO on the other hand is fixed in size and throughput increased. BASE FAIRALLOC Minor Faults 53721925 57188551 Major Faults 392195 15157 Swap Ins 2994854 112770 Swap Outs 4907092 134982 Direct pages scanned 0 41824 Kswapd pages scanned 32975063 8128269 Kswapd pages reclaimed 6323069 7093495 Direct pages reclaimed 0 41824 Kswapd efficiency 19% 87% Kswapd velocity 3386.573 915.414 Direct efficiency 100% 100% Direct velocity 0.000 4.710 Percentage direct scans 0% 0% Zone normal velocity 2011.338 550.661 Zone dma32 velocity 1365.623 369.221 Zone dma velocity 9.612 0.242 Page writes by reclaim 18732404.000 614807.000 Page writes file 13825312 479825 Page writes anon 4907092 134982 Page reclaim immediate 85490 5647 Sector Reads 12080532 483244 Sector Writes 88740508 65438876 Page rescued immediate 0 0 Slabs scanned 82560 12160 Direct inode steals 0 0 Kswapd inode steals 24401 40013 Kswapd skipped wait 0 0 THP fault alloc 6 8 THP collapse alloc 5481 5812 THP splits 75 22 THP fault fallback 0 0 THP collapse fail 0 0 Compaction stalls 0 54 Compaction success 0 45 Compaction failures 0 9 Page migrate success 881492 82278 Page migrate failure 0 0 Compaction pages isolated 0 60334 Compaction migrate scanned 0 53505 Compaction free scanned 0 1537605 Compaction cost 914 86 NUMA PTE updates 46738231 41988419 NUMA hint faults 31175564 24213387 NUMA hint local faults 10427393 6411593 NUMA pages migrated 881492 55344 AutoNUMA cost 156221 121361 The overall runtime was reduced, throughput for both the foreground workload as well as the background IO improved, major faults, swapping and reclaim activity shrunk significantly, reclaim efficiency more than quadrupled. include/linux/mmzone.h | 1 + mm/page_alloc.c | 85 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------------ mm/vmscan.c | 2 +- 3 files changed, 69 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-) -- 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>