Sorry for long reply. On (10/09/15 08:36), Dan Streetman wrote: [..] > Specifically regarding the determinism of each; obviously compaction > will have an impact, since it takes cpu cycles to do the compaction. > I don't know how much impact, but I think at minimum it would make > sense to add a module param to zsmalloc to allow disabling compaction. Well, this was on my list of things TODO; and, BTW, this was *ONE OF* the reason I added bool flag `->shrinker_enabled'. static unsigned long zs_shrinker_count(struct shrinker *shrinker, struct shrink_control *sc) { ... if (!pool->shrinker_enabled) return 0; ... } So, technically, it's easy. I'm not sure, though, that I want to export this low level knob. It sort of makes sense, but at the same time a bit tricky. > But even without compaction, there is an important difference between > zbud and zsmalloc; zbud will never alloc more than 1 page when it > needs more storage, while zsmalloc will alloc between 1 and > ZS_MAX_PAGES_PER_ZSPAGE (currently 4) pages when it needs more > storage. So in the worst case (if memory is tight and alloc_page() > takes a while), zsmalloc could take up to 4 times as long as zbud to > store a page. > hm... zsmalloc release zspage once it becomes empty, which happens: a) when zspage receives 'final' zs_free() (no more objects in use) and turns into a ZS_EMPTY zspage b) when compaction moves all of its object to other zspages and, thus, the zspage becomes ZS_EMPTY And, basically, this `allocate ZS_MAX_PAGES_PER_ZSPAGE pages' penalty hits (to some degree) us even if we are not so tight on memory. So... *May be* it makes some sense to guarantee (well, via a special knob) that each class has no less than N unused objects (hot-cache), which may be (but not necessarily is) an equivalent of keeping M ZS_EMPTY zspage(-s) in the class. IOW, avoid free_zspage() if that will result in K alloc_page() shortly, simply because we end up having just 1 or 2 unused objects in the class. I can understand that some workloads care less about memory efficiency. Looks like I finally have more time this week so I'll try to take a look why zsmalloc makes Vitaly so unhappy. -ss > Now, that should average out, where zsmalloc doesn't > need to alloc as many times as zbud (since it allocs more at once), > but on the small scale there will be less consistency of page storage > times with zsmalloc than zbud; at least, theoretically ;-) > > I suggest you work with Minchan to find out what comparison data he > wants to see, to prove zbud is more stable/consistent under a certain > workload (and/or across kernel versions). > > -- > 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> > -- 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>