Re: [PATCH v2 2/5] mm: Extends local cpu counter vm_diff_nodestat from s8 to s16

[Christopher Lameter]

On Tue, 19 Dec 2017, Kemi Wang wrote:

> The type s8 used for vm_diff_nodestat[] as local cpu counters has the
> limitation of global counters update frequency, especially for those
> monotone increasing type of counters like NUMA counters with more and more
> cpus/nodes. This patch extends the type of vm_diff_nodestat from s8 to s16
> without any functionality change.

Well the reason for s8 was to keep the data structures small so that they
fit in the higher level cpu caches. The large these structures become the
more cachelines are used by the counters and the larger the performance
influence on the code that should not be impacted by the overhead.