Re: Re: Re: [RFC] autonuma: Support to scan page table asynchronously

[Mel Gorman]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 12:21:29PM +0200, SeongJae Park wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:04:17 +0200 Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 09:05:08AM +0200, SeongJae Park wrote:
> > > I think the main idea of DAMON[1] might be able to applied here.  Have you
> > > considered it?
> > > 
> > > [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200406130938.14066-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/
> > 
> > I've ignored that entire thing after you said the information it
> > provides was already available through the PMU.
> 
> Sorry if my answer made you confused.  What I wanted to say was that the
> fundamental access checking mechanism that DAMON depends on is PTE Accessed bit
> for now, but it could be modified to use PMU or other features instead. 

I would not be inclined to lean towards either approach for NUMA
balancing. Fiddling with the accessed bit can have consequences for page
aging and residency -- fine for debugging a problem, not to fine for
normal usage. I would expect the PMU approach would have high overhead
as well as taking over a PMU counter that userspace debugging may expect
to be available.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs