Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm: page_counter: relayout structure to reduce false sharing

From: Feng Tang
Date: Mon Jan 04 2021 - 09:44:54 EST


On Mon, Jan 04, 2021 at 03:11:40PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Mon 04-01-21 21:34:45, Feng Tang wrote:
> > Hi Michal,
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 04, 2021 at 02:03:57PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Tue 29-12-20 22:35:13, Feng Tang wrote:
> > > > When checking a memory cgroup related performance regression [1],
> > > > from the perf c2c profiling data, we found high false sharing for
> > > > accessing 'usage' and 'parent'.
> > > >
> > > > On 64 bit system, the 'usage' and 'parent' are close to each other,
> > > > and easy to be in one cacheline (for cacheline size == 64+ B). 'usage'
> > > > is usally written, while 'parent' is usually read as the cgroup's
> > > > hierarchical counting nature.
> > > >
> > > > So move the 'parent' to the end of the structure to make sure they
> > > > are in different cache lines.
> > >
> > > Yes, parent is write-once field so having it away from other heavy RW
> > > fields makes sense to me.
> > >
> > > > Following are some performance data with the patch, against
> > > > v5.11-rc1, on several generations of Xeon platforms. Most of the
> > > > results are improvements, with only one malloc case on one platform
> > > > shows a -4.0% regression. Each category below has several subcases
> > > > run on different platform, and only the worst and best scores are
> > > > listed:
> > > >
> > > > fio: +1.8% ~ +8.3%
> > > > will-it-scale/malloc1: -4.0% ~ +8.9%
> > > > will-it-scale/page_fault1: no change
> > > > will-it-scale/page_fault2: +2.4% ~ +20.2%
> > >
> > > What is the second number? Std?
> >
> > For each case like 'page_fault2', I run several subcases on different
> > generations of Xeon, and only listed the lowest (first number) and
> > highest (second number) scores.
> >
> > There are 5 runs and the result are: +3.6%, +2.4%, +10.4%, +20.2%,
> > +4.7%, and +2.4% and +20.2% are listed.
>
> This should be really explained in the changelog and ideally mention the
> model as well. Seeing a std would be appreciated as well.

I guess I haven't made it clear (due to my poor English :))

The five scores are for different parameters on different HW:

Cascadelake (100%) 77844 +3.6% 80667 will-it-scale.per_process_ops
Cascadelake (50%) 182475 +2.4% 186866 will-it-scale.per_process_ops
Haswell (100%) 84870 +10.4% 93671 will-it-scale.per_process_ops
Haswell (50%) 197684 +20.2% 237585 will-it-scale.per_process_ops
Newer Xeon (50%) 268569 +4.7% 281320 will-it-scale.per_process_ops

+2.4% is the lowest improvement, while +20.2% is the highest.

100% means the number of forked test processes eqauls to CPU number,
while 50% is the half. Each line has been runed several times, whose score
are consistent without big deviations.

Thanks,
Feng