Re: [PATCH 1/7] node: Link memory nodes to their compute nodes

From: Keith Busch
Date: Thu Nov 15 2018 - 10:02:48 EST


On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 05:57:10AM -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 03:49:14PM -0700, Keith Busch wrote:
> > Memory-only nodes will often have affinity to a compute node, and
> > platforms have ways to express that locality relationship.
> >
> > A node containing CPUs or other DMA devices that can initiate memory
> > access are referred to as "memory iniators". A "memory target" is a
> > node that provides at least one phyiscal address range accessible to a
> > memory initiator.
>
> I think I may be confused here. If there is _no_ link from node X to
> node Y, does that mean that node X's CPUs cannot access the memory on
> node Y? In my mind, all nodes can access all memory in the system,
> just not with uniform bandwidth/latency.

The link is just about which nodes are "local". It's like how nodes have
a cpulist. Other CPUs not in the node's list can acces that node's memory,
but the ones in the mask are local, and provide useful optimization hints.

Would a node mask would be prefered to symlinks?