[PATCH v3 0/3] page stealing tweaks

[Vlastimil Babka]

Changes since v2:
o No functional changes
o Rebased to 3.19-rc5 (but there were no real context changes)
o Tested with 3.19-rc4 and my last compaction series [1], which is however
  not meant as a prerequisity. It just stabilizes the benchmark results,
  especially for non-restart iterations 2+, and makes evaluation easier.
  I consider these patches ready as they are for current tree.

When studying page stealing, I noticed some weird looking decisions in
try_to_steal_freepages(). The first I assume is a bug (Patch 1), the following
two patches were driven by evaluation.

Testing was done with stress-highalloc of mmtests, using the
mm_page_alloc_extfrag tracepoint and postprocessing to get counts of how often
page stealing occurs for individual migratetypes, and what migratetypes are
used for fallbacks. Arguably, the worst case of page stealing is when
UNMOVABLE allocation steals from MOVABLE pageblock. RECLAIMABLE allocation
stealing from MOVABLE allocation is also not ideal, so the goal is to minimize
these two cases.

The evaluation of v2 wasn't always clear win and Joonsoo questioned the
results. Here I used different baseline which includes RFC compaction
improvements from [1]. I found that the compaction improvements reduce
variability of stress-highalloc, so there's less noise in the data.

First, let's look at stress-highalloc configured to do sync compaction, and
how these patches reduce page stealing events during the test. First column is
after fresh reboot, other two are reiterations of test without reboot. That
was all accumulater over 5 re-iterations (so the benchmark was run 5x3 times
with 5 fresh restarts).


Baseline:

                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                  5-nothp-1       5-nothp-2       5-nothp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                               10264225     8702233    10244125
Extfrag fragmenting                                    10263271     8701552    10243473
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                         13595       17616       15960
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          7989       12193        8447
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         658        1840        1817
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         558        1677        1679
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                        10249018     8682096    10225696


With Patch 1:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                  6-nothp-1       6-nothp-2       6-nothp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                               11834954     9877523     9774860
Extfrag fragmenting                                    11833993     9876880     9774245
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                          7342       16129       11712
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          4191       10547        6270
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         373        1130         923
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         302         906         738
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                        11826278     9859621     9761610

With Patch 2:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                  7-nothp-1       7-nothp-2       7-nothp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                                4725990     3668793     3807436
Extfrag fragmenting                                     4725104     3668252     3806898
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                          6678        7974        7281
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          2051        3829        4017
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         429        1208        1278
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         369         976        1034
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                         4717997     3659070     3798339


With Patch 3:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                  8-nothp-1       8-nothp-2       8-nothp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                                5016183     4700142     3850633
Extfrag fragmenting                                     5015325     4699613     3850072
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                          1312        3154        3088
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          1115        2777        2714
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         437        1193        1097
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         330         969         879
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                         5013576     4695266     3845887

In v2 we've seen apparent regression with Patch 1 for unmovable events, this
is now gone, suggesting it was indeed noise. Here, each patch improves the
situation for unmovable events. Reclaimable is improved by patch 1 and then
either the same modulo noise, or perhaps sligtly worse - a small price for
unmovable improvements, IMHO. The number of movable allocations falling back
to other migratetypes is most noisy, but it's reduced to half at Patch 2
nevertheless. These are least critical as compaction can move them around.

If we look at success rates, the patches don't affect them, that didn't change.

Baseline:
                             3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4
                            5-nothp-1             5-nothp-2             5-nothp-3
Success 1 Min         49.00 (  0.00%)       42.00 ( 14.29%)       41.00 ( 16.33%)
Success 1 Mean        51.00 (  0.00%)       45.00 ( 11.76%)       42.60 ( 16.47%)
Success 1 Max         55.00 (  0.00%)       51.00 (  7.27%)       46.00 ( 16.36%)
Success 2 Min         53.00 (  0.00%)       47.00 ( 11.32%)       44.00 ( 16.98%)
Success 2 Mean        59.60 (  0.00%)       50.80 ( 14.77%)       48.20 ( 19.13%)
Success 2 Max         64.00 (  0.00%)       56.00 ( 12.50%)       52.00 ( 18.75%)
Success 3 Min         84.00 (  0.00%)       82.00 (  2.38%)       78.00 (  7.14%)
Success 3 Mean        85.60 (  0.00%)       82.80 (  3.27%)       79.40 (  7.24%)
Success 3 Max         86.00 (  0.00%)       83.00 (  3.49%)       80.00 (  6.98%)

Patch 1:
                             3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4
                            6-nothp-1             6-nothp-2             6-nothp-3
Success 1 Min         49.00 (  0.00%)       44.00 ( 10.20%)       44.00 ( 10.20%)
Success 1 Mean        51.80 (  0.00%)       46.00 ( 11.20%)       45.80 ( 11.58%)
Success 1 Max         54.00 (  0.00%)       49.00 (  9.26%)       49.00 (  9.26%)
Success 2 Min         58.00 (  0.00%)       49.00 ( 15.52%)       48.00 ( 17.24%)
Success 2 Mean        60.40 (  0.00%)       51.80 ( 14.24%)       50.80 ( 15.89%)
Success 2 Max         63.00 (  0.00%)       54.00 ( 14.29%)       55.00 ( 12.70%)
Success 3 Min         84.00 (  0.00%)       81.00 (  3.57%)       79.00 (  5.95%)
Success 3 Mean        85.00 (  0.00%)       81.60 (  4.00%)       79.80 (  6.12%)
Success 3 Max         86.00 (  0.00%)       82.00 (  4.65%)       82.00 (  4.65%)

Patch 2:

                             3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4
                            7-nothp-1             7-nothp-2             7-nothp-3
Success 1 Min         50.00 (  0.00%)       44.00 ( 12.00%)       39.00 ( 22.00%)
Success 1 Mean        52.80 (  0.00%)       45.60 ( 13.64%)       42.40 ( 19.70%)
Success 1 Max         55.00 (  0.00%)       46.00 ( 16.36%)       47.00 ( 14.55%)
Success 2 Min         52.00 (  0.00%)       48.00 (  7.69%)       45.00 ( 13.46%)
Success 2 Mean        53.40 (  0.00%)       49.80 (  6.74%)       48.80 (  8.61%)
Success 2 Max         57.00 (  0.00%)       52.00 (  8.77%)       52.00 (  8.77%)
Success 3 Min         84.00 (  0.00%)       81.00 (  3.57%)       79.00 (  5.95%)
Success 3 Mean        85.00 (  0.00%)       82.40 (  3.06%)       79.60 (  6.35%)
Success 3 Max         86.00 (  0.00%)       83.00 (  3.49%)       80.00 (  6.98%)

Patch 3:
                             3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4              3.19-rc4
                            8-nothp-1             8-nothp-2             8-nothp-3
Success 1 Min         46.00 (  0.00%)       44.00 (  4.35%)       42.00 (  8.70%)
Success 1 Mean        50.20 (  0.00%)       45.60 (  9.16%)       44.00 ( 12.35%)
Success 1 Max         52.00 (  0.00%)       47.00 (  9.62%)       47.00 (  9.62%)
Success 2 Min         53.00 (  0.00%)       49.00 (  7.55%)       48.00 (  9.43%)
Success 2 Mean        55.80 (  0.00%)       50.60 (  9.32%)       49.00 ( 12.19%)
Success 2 Max         59.00 (  0.00%)       52.00 ( 11.86%)       51.00 ( 13.56%)
Success 3 Min         84.00 (  0.00%)       80.00 (  4.76%)       79.00 (  5.95%)
Success 3 Mean        85.40 (  0.00%)       81.60 (  4.45%)       80.40 (  5.85%)
Success 3 Max         87.00 (  0.00%)       83.00 (  4.60%)       82.00 (  5.75%)

While there's no improvement here, I consider reduced fragmentation events to
be worth on its own. Patch 2 also seems to reduce scanning for free pages, and
migrations in compaction, suggesting it has somewhat less work to do:

Patch 1:

Compaction stalls                 4153        3959        3978
Compaction success                1523        1441        1446
Compaction failures               2630        2517        2531
Page migrate success           4600827     4943120     5104348
Page migrate failure             19763       16656       17806
Compaction pages isolated      9597640    10305617    10653541
Compaction migrate scanned    77828948    86533283    87137064
Compaction free scanned      517758295   521312840   521462251
Compaction cost                   5503        5932        6110

Patch 2:

Compaction stalls                 3800        3450        3518
Compaction success                1421        1316        1317
Compaction failures               2379        2134        2201
Page migrate success           4160421     4502708     4752148
Page migrate failure             19705       14340       14911
Compaction pages isolated      8731983     9382374     9910043
Compaction migrate scanned    98362797    96349194    98609686
Compaction free scanned      496512560   469502017   480442545
Compaction cost                   5173        5526        5811

As with v2, /proc/pagetypeinfo appears unaffected with respect to numbers of
unmovable and reclaimable pageblocks.

Configuring the benchmark to allocate like THP page fault (i.e. no sync
compaction) gives much noisier results for iterations 2 and 3 after reboot.
This is not so surprising given how [1] offers lower improvements in this
scenario due to less restarts after deferred compaction which would change
compaction pivot.

Baseline:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                    5-thp-1         5-thp-2         5-thp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                                8148965     6227815     6646741
Extfrag fragmenting                                     8147872     6227130     6646117
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                         10324       12942       15975
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          5972        8495       10907
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         601        1707        2210
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         520        1570        2000
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                         8136947     6212481     6627932

Patch 1:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                    6-thp-1         6-thp-2         6-thp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                                8345457     7574471     7020419
Extfrag fragmenting                                     8343546     7573777     7019718
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                         10256       18535       30716
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          6893       11726       22181
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         465        1208        1023
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         353         996         843
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                         8332825     7554034     6987979

Patch 2:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                    7-thp-1         7-thp-2         7-thp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                                3512847     3020756     2891625
Extfrag fragmenting                                     3511940     3020185     2891059
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                          9017        6892        6191
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable          1524        3053        2435
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         445        1081        1160
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         375         918         986
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                         3502478     3012212     2883708

Patch 3:
                                                   3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4        3.19-rc4
                                                    8-thp-1         8-thp-2         8-thp-3
Page alloc extfrag event                                3181699     3082881     2674164
Extfrag fragmenting                                     3180812     3082303     2673611
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable                          1201        4031        4040
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable           974        3611        3645
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable                         478        1165        1294
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable         387         985        1030
Extfrag fragmenting for movable                         3179133     3077107     2668277

The improvements for first iteration are clear, the rest is much noisier and
can appear like regression for Patch 1. Anyway, patch 2 rectifies it.

Allocation success rates are again unaffected so there's no point in making
this e-mail any longer.

[1] http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=142166196321125&w=2

Vlastimil Babka (3):
  mm: when stealing freepages, also take pages created by splitting
    buddy page
  mm: always steal split buddies in fallback allocations
  mm: more aggressive page stealing for UNMOVABLE allocations

 include/trace/events/kmem.h |  7 ++--
 mm/page_alloc.c             | 78 ++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------------
 2 files changed, 45 insertions(+), 40 deletions(-)

-- 
2.1.2

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