Re: [PATCH] mm: optimize stat output for 11% sys time reduce

From: Roman Gushchin
Date: Thu Jan 08 2026 - 17:51:08 EST


Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 17:37:29 +0800 Jianyue Wu <wujianyue000@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> From: Jianyue Wu <wujianyue000@xxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> Replace seq_printf/seq_buf_printf with lightweight helpers to avoid
>> printf parsing in memcg stats output.
>>
>> Key changes:
>> - Add memcg_seq_put_name_val() for seq_file "name value\n" formatting
>> - Add memcg_seq_buf_put_name_val() for seq_buf "name value\n" formatting
>> - Update __memory_events_show(), swap_events_show(),
>> memory_stat_format(), memory_numa_stat_show(), and related helpers
>>
>> Performance:
>> - 1M reads of memory.stat+memory.numa_stat
>> - Before: real 0m9.663s, user 0m4.840s, sys 0m4.823s
>> - After: real 0m9.051s, user 0m4.775s, sys 0m4.275s (~11.4% sys drop)
>>
>> Tests:
>> - Script:
>> for ((i=1; i<=1000000; i++)); do
>> : > /dev/null < /sys/fs/cgroup/memory.stat
>> : > /dev/null < /sys/fs/cgroup/memory.numa_stat
>> done
>>
>
> I suspect there are workloads which read these files frequently.
>
> I'd be interested in learning "how frequently". Perhaps
> ascii-through-sysfs simply isn't an appropriate API for this data?

We just got a bpf interface for this data merged, exactly to speed
things up: commit 99430ab8b804 ("mm: introduce BPF kfuncs to access
memcg statistics and events") in bpf-next.