Re: [net-next v4 PATCH] page_pool: handle page recycle for NUMA_NO_NODE condition

[Michal Hocko]

On Thu 19-12-19 14:35:35, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Dec 2019 13:09:25 +0100
> Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed 18-12-19 09:01:35, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
> > [...]
> > > For the NUMA_NO_NODE case, when a NIC IRQ is moved to another NUMA
> > > node, then ptr_ring will be emptied in 65 (PP_ALLOC_CACHE_REFILL+1)
> > > chunks per allocation and allocation fall-through to the real
> > > page-allocator with the new nid derived from numa_mem_id(). We accept
> > > that transitioning the alloc cache doesn't happen immediately.  
> 
> Oh, I just realized that the drivers usually refill several RX
> packet-pages at once, this means that this is called N times, meaning
> during a NUMA change this will result in N * 65 pages returned.
> 
> 
> > Could you explain what is the expected semantic of NUMA_NO_NODE in this
> > case? Does it imply always the preferred locality? See my other email[1] to
> > this matter.
> 
> I do think we want NUMA_NO_NODE to mean preferred locality.

I obviously have no saying here because I am not really familiar with
the users of this API but I would note that if there is such an implicit
assumption then you make it impossible to use the numa agnostic page
pool allocator (aka fast reallocation). This might be not important here
but future extension would be harder (you can still hack it around aka
NUMA_REALLY_NO_NODE). My experience tells me that people are quite
creative and usually require (or worse assume) semantics that you
thought were not useful.

That being said, if the NUMA_NO_NODE really should have a special
locality meaning then document it explicitly at least.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs