Re: [PATCH 6/8] Add __GFP_OTHER_NODE flag

From: Andi Kleen
Date: Tue Feb 22 2011 - 16:47:54 EST


On 2/22/2011 1:42 PM, David Rientjes wrote:

This makes the accounting worse, NUMA_LOCAL is defined as "allocation from
local node," meaning it's local to the allocating cpu, not local to the
node being targeted.

Local to the process really (and I defined it originally ...) That is what I'm implementing

I don't think "local to some random kernel daemon which changes mappings on behalf of others"
makes any sense as semantics.

Further, preferred_zone has taken on a much more significant meaning other
than just statistics: it impacts the behavior of memory compaction and how
long congestion timeouts are, if a timeout is taken at all, depending on
the I/O being done on behalf of the zone.

A better way to address the issue is by making sure preferred_zone is
actually correct by using the appropriate zonelist to be passed into the
allocator in the first place

That is what is done already (well for THP together with my other patches)
The problem is just that local_hit/miss still uses numa_node_id() and not the preferred zone
to do the accounting. In most cases that's fine and intended, just not for these
special daemons.


-Andi

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