Re: [PATCH 3/4] mm: slub: Do not take expensive steps for SLUBsspeculative high-order allocations

From: David Rientjes
Date: Mon May 16 2011 - 17:16:59 EST


On Fri, 13 May 2011, Mel Gorman wrote:

> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index 9f8a97b..057f1e2 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -1972,6 +1972,7 @@ gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_t gfp_mask)
> {
> int alloc_flags = ALLOC_WMARK_MIN | ALLOC_CPUSET;
> const gfp_t wait = gfp_mask & __GFP_WAIT;
> + const gfp_t can_wake_kswapd = !(gfp_mask & __GFP_NO_KSWAPD);
>
> /* __GFP_HIGH is assumed to be the same as ALLOC_HIGH to save a branch. */
> BUILD_BUG_ON(__GFP_HIGH != (__force gfp_t) ALLOC_HIGH);
> @@ -1984,7 +1985,7 @@ gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_t gfp_mask)
> */
> alloc_flags |= (__force int) (gfp_mask & __GFP_HIGH);
>
> - if (!wait) {
> + if (!wait && can_wake_kswapd) {
> /*
> * Not worth trying to allocate harder for
> * __GFP_NOMEMALLOC even if it can't schedule.
> diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
> index 98c358d..c5797ab 100644
> --- a/mm/slub.c
> +++ b/mm/slub.c
> @@ -1170,7 +1170,8 @@ static struct page *allocate_slab(struct kmem_cache *s, gfp_t flags, int node)
> * Let the initial higher-order allocation fail under memory pressure
> * so we fall-back to the minimum order allocation.
> */
> - alloc_gfp = (flags | __GFP_NOWARN | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NO_KSWAPD) & ~__GFP_NOFAIL;
> + alloc_gfp = (flags | __GFP_NOWARN | __GFP_NO_KSWAPD) &
> + ~(__GFP_NOFAIL | __GFP_WAIT | __GFP_REPEAT);
>
> page = alloc_slab_page(alloc_gfp, node, oo);
> if (unlikely(!page)) {

It's unnecessary to clear __GFP_REPEAT, these !__GFP_NOFAIL allocations
will immediately fail.

alloc_gfp would probably benefit from having a comment about why
__GFP_WAIT should be masked off here: that we don't want to do compaction
or direct reclaim or retry the allocation more than once (so both
__GFP_NORETRY and __GFP_REPEAT are no-ops).
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/