[PATCH 3/3] mm: Count list_lru_one::nr_items lockless

[Kirill Tkhai]

During the reclaiming slab of a memcg, shrink_slab iterates
over all registered shrinkers in the system, and tries to count
and consume objects related to the cgroup. In case of memory
pressure, this behaves bad: I observe high system time and
time spent in list_lru_count_one() for many processes on RHEL7
kernel (collected via $perf record --call-graph fp -j k -a):

0,50%  nixstatsagent  [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] _raw_spin_lock                [k] _raw_spin_lock
0,26%  nixstatsagent  [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] shrink_slab                   [k] shrink_slab
0,23%  nixstatsagent  [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] super_cache_count             [k] super_cache_count
0,15%  nixstatsagent  [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] __list_lru_count_one.isra.2   [k] _raw_spin_lock
0,15%  nixstatsagent  [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] list_lru_count_one            [k] __list_lru_count_one.isra.2

0,94%  mysqld         [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] _raw_spin_lock                [k] _raw_spin_lock
0,57%  mysqld         [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] shrink_slab                   [k] shrink_slab
0,51%  mysqld         [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] super_cache_count             [k] super_cache_count
0,32%  mysqld         [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] __list_lru_count_one.isra.2   [k] _raw_spin_lock
0,32%  mysqld         [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] list_lru_count_one            [k] __list_lru_count_one.isra.2

0,73%  sshd           [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] _raw_spin_lock                [k] _raw_spin_lock
0,35%  sshd           [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] shrink_slab                   [k] shrink_slab
0,32%  sshd           [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] super_cache_count             [k] super_cache_count
0,21%  sshd           [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] __list_lru_count_one.isra.2   [k] _raw_spin_lock
0,21%  sshd           [kernel.vmlinux]  [k] list_lru_count_one            [k] __list_lru_count_one.isra.2

This patch aims to make super_cache_count() more effective. It
makes __list_lru_count_one() count nr_items lockless to minimize
overhead introducing by locking operation, and to make parallel
reclaims more scalable.

The lock won't be taken on shrinker::count_objects(),
it would be taken only for the real shrink by the thread,
who realizes it.

https://jira.sw.ru/browse/PSBM-69296

Signed-off-by: Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
 mm/list_lru.c |    4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/list_lru.c b/mm/list_lru.c
index 2db3cdadb577..8d1d2db5f4fb 100644
--- a/mm/list_lru.c
+++ b/mm/list_lru.c
@@ -177,10 +177,10 @@ static unsigned long __list_lru_count_one(struct list_lru *lru,
 	struct list_lru_one *l;
 	unsigned long count;
 
-	spin_lock(&nlru->lock);
+	rcu_read_lock();
 	l = list_lru_from_memcg_idx(nlru, memcg_idx);
 	count = l->nr_items;
-	spin_unlock(&nlru->lock);
+	rcu_read_unlock();
 
 	return count;
 }