[PATCH 0/3] Reduce system overhead of automatic NUMA balancing

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Mon Mar 23 2015 - 08:24:29 EST


These are three follow-on patches based on the xfsrepair workload Dave
Chinner reported was problematic in 4.0-rc1 due to changes in page table
management -- https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/3/1/226.

Much of the problem was reduced by commit 53da3bc2ba9e ("mm: fix up numa
read-only thread grouping logic") and commit ba68bc0115eb ("mm: thp:
Return the correct value for change_huge_pmd"). It was known that the performance
in 3.19 was still better even if is far less safe. This series aims to
restore the performance without compromising on safety.

Dave, you already tested patch 1 on its own but it would be nice to test
patches 1+2 and 1+2+3 separately just to be certain.

For the test of this mail, I'm comparing 3.19 against 4.0-rc4 and the
three patches applied on top

autonumabench
3.19.0 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4
vanilla vanilla vmwrite-v5r8 preserve-v5r8 slowscan-v5r8
Time System-NUMA01 124.00 ( 0.00%) 161.86 (-30.53%) 107.13 ( 13.60%) 103.13 ( 16.83%) 145.01 (-16.94%)
Time System-NUMA01_THEADLOCAL 115.54 ( 0.00%) 107.64 ( 6.84%) 131.87 (-14.13%) 83.30 ( 27.90%) 92.35 ( 20.07%)
Time System-NUMA02 9.35 ( 0.00%) 10.44 (-11.66%) 8.95 ( 4.28%) 10.72 (-14.65%) 8.16 ( 12.73%)
Time System-NUMA02_SMT 3.87 ( 0.00%) 4.63 (-19.64%) 4.57 (-18.09%) 3.99 ( -3.10%) 3.36 ( 13.18%)
Time Elapsed-NUMA01 570.06 ( 0.00%) 567.82 ( 0.39%) 515.78 ( 9.52%) 517.26 ( 9.26%) 543.80 ( 4.61%)
Time Elapsed-NUMA01_THEADLOCAL 393.69 ( 0.00%) 384.83 ( 2.25%) 384.10 ( 2.44%) 384.31 ( 2.38%) 380.73 ( 3.29%)
Time Elapsed-NUMA02 49.09 ( 0.00%) 49.33 ( -0.49%) 48.86 ( 0.47%) 48.78 ( 0.63%) 50.94 ( -3.77%)
Time Elapsed-NUMA02_SMT 47.51 ( 0.00%) 47.15 ( 0.76%) 47.98 ( -0.99%) 48.12 ( -1.28%) 49.56 ( -4.31%)

3.19.0 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4
vanilla vanillavmwrite-v5r8preserve-v5r8slowscan-v5r8
User 46334.60 46391.94 44383.95 43971.89 44372.12
System 252.84 284.66 252.61 201.24 249.00
Elapsed 1062.14 1050.96 998.68 1000.94 1026.78

Overall the system CPU usage is comparable and the test is naturally a bit variable. The
slowing of the scanner hurts numa01 but on this machine it is an adverse workload and
patches that dramatically help it often hurt absolutely everything else.

Due to patch 2, the fault activity is interesting

3.19.0 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4
vanilla vanillavmwrite-v5r8preserve-v5r8slowscan-v5r8
Minor Faults 2097811 2656646 2597249 1981230 1636841
Major Faults 362 450 365 364 365

Note the impact preserving the write bit across protection updates and fault reduces
faults.

NUMA alloc hit 1229008 1217015 1191660 1178322 1199681
NUMA alloc miss 0 0 0 0 0
NUMA interleave hit 0 0 0 0 0
NUMA alloc local 1228514 1216317 1190871 1177448 1199021
NUMA base PTE updates 245706197 240041607 238195516 244704842 115012800
NUMA huge PMD updates 479530 468448 464868 477573 224487
NUMA page range updates 491225557 479886983 476207932 489222218 229950144
NUMA hint faults 659753 656503 641678 656926 294842
NUMA hint local faults 381604 373963 360478 337585 186249
NUMA hint local percent 57 56 56 51 63
NUMA pages migrated 5412140 6374899 6266530 5277468 5755096
AutoNUMA cost 5121% 5083% 4994% 5097% 2388%

Here the impact of slowing the PTE scanner on migratrion failures is obvious as "NUMA base PTE updates" and
"NUMA huge PMD updates" are massively reduced even though the headline performance
is very similar.

As xfsrepair was the reported workload here is the impact of the series on it.

xfsrepair
3.19.0 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4
vanilla vanilla vmwrite-v5r8 preserve-v5r8 slowscan-v5r8
Min real-fsmark 1183.29 ( 0.00%) 1165.73 ( 1.48%) 1152.78 ( 2.58%) 1153.64 ( 2.51%) 1177.62 ( 0.48%)
Min syst-fsmark 4107.85 ( 0.00%) 4027.75 ( 1.95%) 3986.74 ( 2.95%) 3979.16 ( 3.13%) 4048.76 ( 1.44%)
Min real-xfsrepair 441.51 ( 0.00%) 463.96 ( -5.08%) 449.50 ( -1.81%) 440.08 ( 0.32%) 439.87 ( 0.37%)
Min syst-xfsrepair 195.76 ( 0.00%) 278.47 (-42.25%) 262.34 (-34.01%) 203.70 ( -4.06%) 143.64 ( 26.62%)
Amean real-fsmark 1188.30 ( 0.00%) 1177.34 ( 0.92%) 1157.97 ( 2.55%) 1158.21 ( 2.53%) 1182.22 ( 0.51%)
Amean syst-fsmark 4111.37 ( 0.00%) 4055.70 ( 1.35%) 3987.19 ( 3.02%) 3998.72 ( 2.74%) 4061.69 ( 1.21%)
Amean real-xfsrepair 450.88 ( 0.00%) 468.32 ( -3.87%) 454.14 ( -0.72%) 442.36 ( 1.89%) 440.59 ( 2.28%)
Amean syst-xfsrepair 199.66 ( 0.00%) 290.60 (-45.55%) 277.20 (-38.84%) 204.68 ( -2.51%) 150.55 ( 24.60%)
Stddev real-fsmark 4.12 ( 0.00%) 10.82 (-162.29%) 4.14 ( -0.28%) 5.98 (-45.05%) 4.60 (-11.53%)
Stddev syst-fsmark 2.63 ( 0.00%) 20.32 (-671.82%) 0.37 ( 85.89%) 16.47 (-525.59%) 15.05 (-471.79%)
Stddev real-xfsrepair 6.87 ( 0.00%) 4.55 ( 33.75%) 3.46 ( 49.58%) 1.78 ( 74.12%) 0.52 ( 92.50%)
Stddev syst-xfsrepair 3.02 ( 0.00%) 10.30 (-241.37%) 13.17 (-336.37%) 0.71 ( 76.63%) 5.00 (-65.61%)
CoeffVar real-fsmark 0.35 ( 0.00%) 0.92 (-164.73%) 0.36 ( -2.91%) 0.52 (-48.82%) 0.39 (-12.10%)
CoeffVar syst-fsmark 0.06 ( 0.00%) 0.50 (-682.41%) 0.01 ( 85.45%) 0.41 (-543.22%) 0.37 (-478.78%)
CoeffVar real-xfsrepair 1.52 ( 0.00%) 0.97 ( 36.21%) 0.76 ( 49.94%) 0.40 ( 73.62%) 0.12 ( 92.33%)
CoeffVar syst-xfsrepair 1.51 ( 0.00%) 3.54 (-134.54%) 4.75 (-214.31%) 0.34 ( 77.20%) 3.32 (-119.63%)
Max real-fsmark 1193.39 ( 0.00%) 1191.77 ( 0.14%) 1162.90 ( 2.55%) 1166.66 ( 2.24%) 1188.50 ( 0.41%)
Max syst-fsmark 4114.18 ( 0.00%) 4075.45 ( 0.94%) 3987.65 ( 3.08%) 4019.45 ( 2.30%) 4082.80 ( 0.76%)
Max real-xfsrepair 457.80 ( 0.00%) 474.60 ( -3.67%) 457.82 ( -0.00%) 444.42 ( 2.92%) 441.03 ( 3.66%)
Max syst-xfsrepair 203.11 ( 0.00%) 303.65 (-49.50%) 294.35 (-44.92%) 205.33 ( -1.09%) 155.28 ( 23.55%)

The really relevant lines as syst-xfsrepair which is the system CPU usage
when running xfsrepair. Note that on my machine the overhead was 45% higher
on 4.0-rc4 which may be part of what Dave is seeing. Once we preserve the
write bit across faults, it's only 2.51% higher on average. With the full
series applied, system CPU usage is 24.6% lower on average.

Again, the impact of preserving the write bit on minor faults is obvious
and the impact of slowing scanning after migration failures is obvious
on the PTE updates. Note also that the number of pages migrated is much
reduced even though the headline performance is comparable.

3.19.0 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4
vanilla vanillavmwrite-v5r8preserve-v5r8slowscan-v5r8
Minor Faults 153466827 254507978 249163829 153501373 105737890
Major Faults 610 702 690 649 724
NUMA base PTE updates 217735049 210756527 217729596 216937111 144344993
NUMA huge PMD updates 129294 85044 106921 127246 79887
NUMA pages migrated 21938995 29705270 28594162 22687324 16258075

3.19.0 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4 4.0.0-rc4
vanilla vanillavmwrite-v5r8preserve-v5r8slowscan-v5r8
Mean sdb-avgqusz 13.47 2.54 2.55 2.47 2.49
Mean sdb-avgrqsz 202.32 140.22 139.50 139.02 138.12
Mean sdb-await 25.92 5.09 5.33 5.02 5.22
Mean sdb-r_await 4.71 0.19 0.83 0.51 0.11
Mean sdb-w_await 104.13 5.21 5.38 5.05 5.32
Mean sdb-svctm 0.59 0.13 0.14 0.13 0.14
Mean sdb-rrqm 0.16 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Mean sdb-wrqm 3.59 1799.43 1826.84 1812.21 1785.67
Max sdb-avgqusz 111.06 12.13 14.05 11.66 15.60
Max sdb-avgrqsz 255.60 190.34 190.01 187.33 191.78
Max sdb-await 168.24 39.28 49.22 44.64 65.62
Max sdb-r_await 660.00 52.00 280.00 76.00 12.00
Max sdb-w_await 7804.00 39.28 49.22 44.64 65.62
Max sdb-svctm 4.00 2.82 2.86 1.98 2.84
Max sdb-rrqm 8.30 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Max sdb-wrqm 34.20 5372.80 5278.60 5386.60 5546.15

FWIW, I also checked SPECjbb in different configurations but it's similar observations -- minor faults lower,
PTE update activity lower and performance is roughly comparable against 3.19.

include/linux/sched.h | 9 +++++----
kernel/sched/fair.c | 8 ++++++--
mm/huge_memory.c | 25 ++++++++++++-------------
mm/memory.c | 22 ++++++++++++----------
mm/mprotect.c | 3 +++
5 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 29 deletions(-)

--
2.1.2

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