[PATCH v14 00/15] Introduce Data Access MONitor (DAMON)

[SeongJae Park]

From: SeongJae Park <sjpark@xxxxxxxxx>

Introduction
============

DAMON is a data access monitoring framework subsystem for the Linux kernel.
The core mechanisms of DAMON called 'region based sampling' and adaptive
regions adjustment' (refer to :doc:`mechanisms` for the detail) make it

 - accurate (The monitored information is useful for DRAM level memory
   management. It might not appropriate for Cache-level accuracy, though.),
 - ligfht-weight (The monitoring overhead is low enough to be applied online
   while making no impact on the performance of the target workloads.), and
 - scalable (the upper-bound of the instrumentation overhead is controllable
   regardless of the size of target workloads.).

Using this framework, therefore, the kernel's core memory management mechanisms
including reclamation and THP can be optimized for better memory management.
The experimental memory management optimization works that incurring high
instrumentation overhead will be able to have another try.  In user space,
meanwhile, users who have some special workloads will be able to write
personalized tools or applications for deeper understanding and specialized
optimizations of their systems.

Evaluations
===========

We evaluated DAMON's overhead, monitoring quality and usefulness using 25
realistic workloads on my QEMU/KVM based virtual machine running a kernel that
v13 DAMON patchset is applied.

DAMON is lightweight.  It increases system memory usage by only -0.39% and
consumes less than 1% CPU time in most case.  It slows target workloads down by
only 0.63%.

DAMON is accurate and useful for memory management optimizations.  An
experimental DAMON-based operation scheme for THP, 'ethp', removes 69.43% of
THP memory overheads while preserving 37.11% of THP speedup.  Another
experimental DAMON-based 'proactive reclamation' implementation, 'prcl',
reduces 89.30% of residential sets and 22.40% of system memory footprint while
incurring only 1.98% runtime overhead in the best case (parsec3/freqmine).

NOTE that the experimentail THP optimization and proactive reclamation are not
for production, just only for proof of concepts.

Please refer to the official document[1] or "Documentation/admin-guide/mm: Add
a document for DAMON" patch in this patchset for detailed evaluation setup and
results.

[1] https://damonitor.github.io/doc/html/latest-damon

More Information
================

We prepared a showcase web site[1] that you can get more information.  There
are

- the official documentations[2],
- the heatmap format dynamic access pattern of various realistic workloads for
  heap area[3], mmap()-ed area[4], and stack[5] area,
- the dynamic working set size distribution[6] and chronological working set
  size changes[7], and
- the latest performance test results[8].

[1] https://damonitor.github.io/_index
[2] https://damonitor.github.io/doc/html/latest-damon
[3] https://damonitor.github.io/test/result/visual/latest/heatmap.0.html
[4] https://damonitor.github.io/test/result/visual/latest/heatmap.1.html
[5] https://damonitor.github.io/test/result/visual/latest/heatmap.2.html
[6] https://damonitor.github.io/test/result/visual/latest/wss_sz.html
[7] https://damonitor.github.io/test/result/visual/latest/wss_time.html
[8] https://damonitor.github.io/test/result/perf/latest/html/index.html

Baseline and Complete Git Trees
===============================

The patches are based on the v5.7.  You can also clone the complete git
tree:

    $ git clone git://github.com/sjp38/linux -b damon/patches/v14

The web is also available:
https://github.com/sjp38/linux/releases/tag/damon/patches/v14

There are a couple of trees for entire DAMON patchset series.  It includes
future features.  The first one[1] contains the changes for latest release,
while the other one[2] contains the changes for next release.

[1] https://github.com/sjp38/linux/tree/damon/master
[2] https://github.com/sjp38/linux/tree/damon/next

Sequence Of Patches
===================

The 1st patch exports 'lookup_page_ext()' to GPL modules so that it can be used
by DAMON even though it is built as a loadable module.

Next four patches implement the core of DAMON and it's programming interface.
The 2nd patch introduces DAMON module, it's data structures, and data structure
related common functions.  Following three patches (3rd to 5th) implements the
core mechanisms of DAMON, namely regions based sampling (patch 3), adaptive
regions adjustment (patch 4), and dynamic memory mapping chage adoption
(patch 5).

Following four patches are for low level users of DAMON.  The 6th patch
implements callbacks for each of monitoring steps so that users can do whatever
they want with the access patterns.  The 7th one implements recording of access
patterns in DAMON for better convenience and efficiency.  Each of next two
patches (8th and 9th) respectively adds a debugfs interface for privileged
people and/or programs in user space, and a tracepoint for other tracepoints
supporting tracers such as perf.

Two patches for high level users of DAMON follows.  To provide a minimal
reference to the debugfs interface and for high level use/tests of the DAMON,
the next patch (10th) implements an user space tool.  The 11th patch adds a
document for administrators of DAMON.

Next three patches are for tests.  The 12th and 13th patches provide unit tests
(based on the kunit) while the 14th patch adds user space tests (based on the
kselftest).

Finally, the last patch (15th) updates the MAINTAINERS file.

Patch History
=============

Changes from v13
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200525091512.30391-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Fix a typo (Leonard Foerster)
 - Fix wring condition of three sub ranges split (Leonard Foerster)
 - Rebase on v5.7

Changes from v12
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200518100018.2293-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Avoid races between debugfs readers and writers
 - Add kernel-doc comments in damon.h

Changes from v11
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200511123302.12520-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Rewrite the document (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Make 'damon_for_each_*' argument order consistent (Leonard Foerster)
 - Fix wrong comment in 'kdamond_merge_regions()' (Leonard Foerster)

Changes from v10
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200505110815.10532-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Reduce aggressive split overhead by doing it only if required

Changes from v9
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200427120442.24179-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Split each region into 4 subregions if possible (Jonathan Cameraon)
 - Update kunit test for the split code change

Changes from v8
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200406130938.14066-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Make regions always aligned by minimal region size that can be changed
   (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Store binary format version in the recording file (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Use 'int' for pid instead of 'unsigned long' (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Fix a race condition in damon thread termination (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Optimize random value generation and recording (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Clean up commit messages and comments (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Clean up code (Stefan Nuernberger)
 - Use explicit signalling and 'do_exit()' for damon thread termination 
 - Add more typos to spelling.txt
 - Update the performance evaluation results
 - Describe future plans in the cover letter

Changes from v7
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200318112722.30143-1-sjpark@xxxxxxxxxx/)
 - Cleanup variable names (Jonathan Cameron)
 - Split sampling address setup from access_check() (Jonathan Cameron)
 - Make sampling address to always locate in the region (Jonathan Cameron)
 - Make initial region's sampling addr to be old (Jonathan Cameron)
 - Split kdamond on/off function to seperate functions (Jonathan Cameron)
 - Fix wrong kernel doc comments (Jonathan Cameron)
 - Reset 'last_accessed' to false in kdamond_check_access() if necessary
 - Rebase on v5.6

Please refer to v7 patchset to get older history.

SeongJae Park (15):
  mm/page_ext: Export lookup_page_ext() to GPL modules
  mm: Introduce Data Access MONitor (DAMON)
  mm/damon: Implement region based sampling
  mm/damon: Adaptively adjust regions
  mm/damon: Apply dynamic memory mapping changes
  mm/damon: Implement callbacks
  mm/damon: Implement access pattern recording
  mm/damon: Add debugfs interface
  mm/damon: Add tracepoints
  tools: Add a minimal user-space tool for DAMON
  Documentation/admin-guide/mm: Add a document for DAMON
  mm/damon: Add kunit tests
  mm/damon-test: Add a kunit test for recording setup
  mm/damon: Add user space selftests
  MAINTAINERS: Update for DAMON

 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/api.rst    |   20 +
 .../admin-guide/mm/damon/damon_heatmap.png    |  Bin 0 -> 8366 bytes
 .../admin-guide/mm/damon/damon_wss_change.png |  Bin 0 -> 7211 bytes
 .../admin-guide/mm/damon/damon_wss_dist.png   |  Bin 0 -> 6173 bytes
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/eval.rst   |  215 +++
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/faq.rst    |   39 +
 .../admin-guide/mm/damon/freqmine_heatmap.png |  Bin 0 -> 8687 bytes
 .../admin-guide/mm/damon/freqmine_wss_sz.png  |  Bin 0 -> 4986 bytes
 .../mm/damon/freqmine_wss_time.png            |  Bin 0 -> 6283 bytes
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/guide.rst  |  196 +++
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/index.rst  |   36 +
 .../admin-guide/mm/damon/mechanisms.rst       |  111 ++
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/plans.rst  |   49 +
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/start.rst  |  119 ++
 .../mm/damon/streamcluster_heatmap.png        |  Bin 0 -> 37916 bytes
 .../mm/damon/streamcluster_wss_sz.png         |  Bin 0 -> 5522 bytes
 .../mm/damon/streamcluster_wss_time.png       |  Bin 0 -> 6322 bytes
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/usage.rst  |  305 ++++
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/index.rst        |    1 +
 MAINTAINERS                                   |   12 +
 include/linux/damon.h                         |  136 ++
 include/trace/events/damon.h                  |   43 +
 mm/Kconfig                                    |   23 +
 mm/Makefile                                   |    1 +
 mm/damon-test.h                               |  635 +++++++
 mm/damon.c                                    | 1516 +++++++++++++++++
 mm/page_ext.c                                 |    1 +
 tools/damon/.gitignore                        |    1 +
 tools/damon/_dist.py                          |   36 +
 tools/damon/_recfile.py                       |   23 +
 tools/damon/bin2txt.py                        |   67 +
 tools/damon/damo                              |   37 +
 tools/damon/heats.py                          |  362 ++++
 tools/damon/nr_regions.py                     |   91 +
 tools/damon/record.py                         |  212 +++
 tools/damon/report.py                         |   45 +
 tools/damon/wss.py                            |   97 ++
 tools/testing/selftests/damon/Makefile        |    7 +
 .../selftests/damon/_chk_dependency.sh        |   28 +
 tools/testing/selftests/damon/_chk_record.py  |  108 ++
 .../testing/selftests/damon/debugfs_attrs.sh  |  139 ++
 .../testing/selftests/damon/debugfs_record.sh |   50 +
 42 files changed, 4761 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/api.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/damon_heatmap.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/damon_wss_change.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/damon_wss_dist.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/eval.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/faq.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/freqmine_heatmap.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/freqmine_wss_sz.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/freqmine_wss_time.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/guide.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/index.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/mechanisms.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/plans.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/start.rst
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/streamcluster_heatmap.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/streamcluster_wss_sz.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/streamcluster_wss_time.png
 create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/usage.rst
 create mode 100644 include/linux/damon.h
 create mode 100644 include/trace/events/damon.h
 create mode 100644 mm/damon-test.h
 create mode 100644 mm/damon.c
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/.gitignore
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/_dist.py
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/_recfile.py
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/bin2txt.py
 create mode 100755 tools/damon/damo
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/heats.py
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/nr_regions.py
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/record.py
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/report.py
 create mode 100644 tools/damon/wss.py
 create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/damon/Makefile
 create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/damon/_chk_dependency.sh
 create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/damon/_chk_record.py
 create mode 100755 tools/testing/selftests/damon/debugfs_attrs.sh
 create mode 100755 tools/testing/selftests/damon/debugfs_record.sh

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