Re: [PATCH 1/3] powerpc/numa: Set numa_node for all possible cpus

[Vlastimil Babka]

On 3/16/20 10:06 AM, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 12-03-20 17:41:58, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> [...]
>> with nid present in:
>> N_POSSIBLE - pgdat might not exist, node_to_mem_node() must return some online
> 
> I would rather have a dummy pgdat for those. Have a look at 
> $ git grep "NODE_DATA.*->" | wc -l
> 63
> 
> Who knows how many else we have there. I haven't looked more closely.
> Besides that what is a real reason to not have pgdat ther and force all
> users of a $random node from those that the platform considers possible
> for special casing? Is that a memory overhead? Is that really a thing?

I guess we can ignore memory overhead. I guess there only might be some concern
that for nodes that are initially offline, we will allocate the pgdat on a
different node, and after they are online, it will stay on a different node with
more access latency from local cpus. If we only allocate for online nodes, it
can always be local? But I guess it doesn't matter that much.

> Somebody has suggested to tweak some of the low level routines to do the
> special casing but I really have to say I do not like that. We shouldn't
> use the first online node or anything like that. We should simply always
> follow the topology presented by FW and of that we need to have a pgdat.
>