Re: [PATCH RFC] rcu/tree: Refactor object allocation and try harder for array allocation

[Uladzislau Rezki]

> > b) Double argument(with rcu_head)
> > This case we consider as it gets called from atomic context even though
> > it can be not. Why we consider such case as atomic: we just assume that.
> > The reason is to keep it simple, because it is not possible to detect whether
> > a current context is attomic or not(for all type of kernels), i mean the one
> > that calls kfree_rcu().
> > 
> > In this case we do not have synchronize_rcu() option. Instead we have an
> > object with rcu_head inside. If an allocation gets failed we just make
> > use of rcu_head inside the object, regular queuing.
> > 
> > In this case we do not need to hard in order to obtain memory. Therefore
> > my question was to Johannes what is best way here. Since we decided to
> > minimize reclaiming, whereas GFP_NOWAIT wakes up kswapd if no memory.
> > GFP_ATOMIC also is not good, because for (b) we do not need to waste
> > it.
> 
> Waking kswapd is fine, because it's a shared facility that doesn't
> just reclaim on your behalf but on behalf of a central goal: to get
> the freelist back to the watermarks. If they're low, somebody will
> sooner or later kick kswapd anyway to do exactly that.
> 
> So unless you ask kswapd for a high order page that is unlikely to be
> needed by anybody else, you're only doing the inevitable.
>
Johannes, thank you for the clarification!

--
Vlad Rezki