[PATCH -V8 1/6] NUMA balancing: optimize page placement for memory tiering system

[Huang Ying]

With the advent of various new memory types, some machines will have
multiple types of memory, e.g. DRAM and PMEM (persistent memory).  The
memory subsystem of these machines can be called memory tiering
system, because the performance of the different types of memory are
usually different.

In such system, because of the memory accessing pattern changing etc,
some pages in the slow memory may become hot globally.  So in this
patch, the NUMA balancing mechanism is enhanced to optimize the page
placement among the different memory types according to hot/cold
dynamically.

In a typical memory tiering system, there are CPUs, fast memory and
slow memory in each physical NUMA node.  The CPUs and the fast memory
will be put in one logical node (called fast memory node), while the
slow memory will be put in another (faked) logical node (called slow
memory node).  That is, the fast memory is regarded as local while the
slow memory is regarded as remote.  So it's possible for the recently
accessed pages in the slow memory node to be promoted to the fast
memory node via the existing NUMA balancing mechanism.

The original NUMA balancing mechanism will stop to migrate pages if the free
memory of the target node will become below the high watermark.  This
is a reasonable policy if there's only one memory type.  But this
makes the original NUMA balancing mechanism almost not work to optimize page
placement among different memory types.  Details are as follows.

It's the common cases that the working-set size of the workload is
larger than the size of the fast memory nodes.  Otherwise, it's
unnecessary to use the slow memory at all.  So in the common cases,
there are almost always no enough free pages in the fast memory nodes,
so that the globally hot pages in the slow memory node cannot be
promoted to the fast memory node.  To solve the issue, we have 2
choices as follows,

a. Ignore the free pages watermark checking when promoting hot pages
   from the slow memory node to the fast memory node.  This will
   create some memory pressure in the fast memory node, thus trigger
   the memory reclaiming.  So that, the cold pages in the fast memory
   node will be demoted to the slow memory node.

b. Make kswapd of the fast memory node to reclaim pages until the free
   pages are a little more (about 10MB) than the high watermark.  Then,
   if the free pages of the fast memory node reaches high watermark, and
   some hot pages need to be promoted, kswapd of the fast memory node
   will be waken up to demote some cold pages in the fast memory node to
   the slow memory node.  This will free some extra space in the fast
   memory node, so the hot pages in the slow memory node can be
   promoted to the fast memory node.

The choice "a" will create the memory pressure in the fast memory
node.  If the memory pressure of the workload is high, the memory
pressure may become so high that the memory allocation latency of the
workload is influenced, e.g. the direct reclaiming may be triggered.

The choice "b" works much better at this aspect.  If the memory
pressure of the workload is high, the hot pages promotion will stop
earlier because its allocation watermark is higher than that of the
normal memory allocation.  So in this patch, choice "b" is
implemented.

In addition to the original page placement optimization among sockets,
the NUMA balancing mechanism is extended to be used to optimize page
placement according to hot/cold among different memory types.  So the
sysctl user space interface (numa_balancing) is extended in a backward
compatible way as follow, so that the users can enable/disable these
functionality individually.

The sysctl is converted from a Boolean value to a bits field.  The
definition of the flags is,

- 0x0: NUMA_BALANCING_DISABLED
- 0x1: NUMA_BALANCING_NORMAL
- 0x2: NUMA_BALANCING_MEMORY_TIERING

TODO:

- Update ABI document: Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt

Signed-off-by: "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Yang Shi <shy828301@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Wei Xu <weixugc@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: osalvador <osalvador@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx
---
 include/linux/sched/sysctl.h | 10 ++++++++++
 kernel/sched/core.c          | 10 ++++------
 kernel/sysctl.c              |  7 ++++---
 mm/migrate.c                 | 19 +++++++++++++++++--
 mm/vmscan.c                  | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 5 files changed, 51 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/sched/sysctl.h b/include/linux/sched/sysctl.h
index 304f431178fd..bc54c1d75d6d 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched/sysctl.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched/sysctl.h
@@ -35,6 +35,16 @@ enum sched_tunable_scaling {
 	SCHED_TUNABLESCALING_END,
 };
 
+#define NUMA_BALANCING_DISABLED		0x0
+#define NUMA_BALANCING_NORMAL		0x1
+#define NUMA_BALANCING_MEMORY_TIERING	0x2
+
+#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA_BALANCING
+extern int sysctl_numa_balancing_mode;
+#else
+#define sysctl_numa_balancing_mode	0
+#endif
+
 /*
  *  control realtime throttling:
  *
diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
index 1bba4128a3e6..e61c2d415601 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/core.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
@@ -4228,6 +4228,8 @@ DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_FALSE(sched_numa_balancing);
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA_BALANCING
 
+int sysctl_numa_balancing_mode;
+
 void set_numabalancing_state(bool enabled)
 {
 	if (enabled)
@@ -4240,20 +4242,16 @@ void set_numabalancing_state(bool enabled)
 int sysctl_numa_balancing(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 			  void *buffer, size_t *lenp, loff_t *ppos)
 {
-	struct ctl_table t;
 	int err;
-	int state = static_branch_likely(&sched_numa_balancing);
 
 	if (write && !capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
 		return -EPERM;
 
-	t = *table;
-	t.data = &state;
-	err = proc_dointvec_minmax(&t, write, buffer, lenp, ppos);
+	err = proc_dointvec_minmax(table, write, buffer, lenp, ppos);
 	if (err < 0)
 		return err;
 	if (write)
-		set_numabalancing_state(state);
+		set_numabalancing_state(*(int *)table->data);
 	return err;
 }
 #endif
diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
index 083be6af29d7..666c58455355 100644
--- a/kernel/sysctl.c
+++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
@@ -115,6 +115,7 @@ static int sixty = 60;
 
 static int __maybe_unused neg_one = -1;
 static int __maybe_unused two = 2;
+static int __maybe_unused three = 3;
 static int __maybe_unused four = 4;
 static unsigned long zero_ul;
 static unsigned long one_ul = 1;
@@ -1803,12 +1804,12 @@ static struct ctl_table kern_table[] = {
 #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA_BALANCING
 	{
 		.procname	= "numa_balancing",
-		.data		= NULL, /* filled in by handler */
-		.maxlen		= sizeof(unsigned int),
+		.data		= &sysctl_numa_balancing_mode,
+		.maxlen		= sizeof(int),
 		.mode		= 0644,
 		.proc_handler	= sysctl_numa_balancing,
 		.extra1		= SYSCTL_ZERO,
-		.extra2		= SYSCTL_ONE,
+		.extra2		= &three,
 	},
 #endif /* CONFIG_NUMA_BALANCING */
 	{
diff --git a/mm/migrate.c b/mm/migrate.c
index a6a7743ee98f..a159a36dd412 100644
--- a/mm/migrate.c
+++ b/mm/migrate.c
@@ -50,6 +50,7 @@
 #include <linux/ptrace.h>
 #include <linux/oom.h>
 #include <linux/memory.h>
+#include <linux/sched/sysctl.h>
 
 #include <asm/tlbflush.h>
 
@@ -2110,16 +2111,30 @@ static int numamigrate_isolate_page(pg_data_t *pgdat, struct page *page)
 {
 	int page_lru;
 	int nr_pages = thp_nr_pages(page);
+	int order = compound_order(page);
 
-	VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(compound_order(page) && !PageTransHuge(page), page);
+	VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(order && !PageTransHuge(page), page);
 
 	/* Do not migrate THP mapped by multiple processes */
 	if (PageTransHuge(page) && total_mapcount(page) > 1)
 		return 0;
 
 	/* Avoid migrating to a node that is nearly full */
-	if (!migrate_balanced_pgdat(pgdat, nr_pages))
+	if (!migrate_balanced_pgdat(pgdat, nr_pages)) {
+		int z;
+
+		if (!(sysctl_numa_balancing_mode & NUMA_BALANCING_MEMORY_TIERING) ||
+		    !numa_demotion_enabled)
+			return 0;
+		if (next_demotion_node(pgdat->node_id) == NUMA_NO_NODE)
+			return 0;
+		for (z = pgdat->nr_zones - 1; z >= 0; z--) {
+			if (populated_zone(pgdat->node_zones + z))
+				break;
+		}
+		wakeup_kswapd(pgdat->node_zones + z, 0, order, ZONE_MOVABLE);
 		return 0;
+	}
 
 	if (isolate_lru_page(page))
 		return 0;
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index f441c5946a4c..7fe737fd0e03 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -56,6 +56,7 @@
 
 #include <linux/swapops.h>
 #include <linux/balloon_compaction.h>
+#include <linux/sched/sysctl.h>
 
 #include "internal.h"
 
@@ -3775,6 +3776,12 @@ static bool pgdat_watermark_boosted(pg_data_t *pgdat, int highest_zoneidx)
 	return false;
 }
 
+/*
+ * Keep the free pages on fast memory node a little more than the high
+ * watermark to accommodate the promoted pages.
+ */
+#define NUMA_BALANCING_PROMOTE_WATERMARK	(10UL * 1024 * 1024 >> PAGE_SHIFT)
+
 /*
  * Returns true if there is an eligible zone balanced for the request order
  * and highest_zoneidx
@@ -3796,6 +3803,15 @@ static bool pgdat_balanced(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int highest_zoneidx)
 			continue;
 
 		mark = high_wmark_pages(zone);
+		if (sysctl_numa_balancing_mode & NUMA_BALANCING_MEMORY_TIERING &&
+		    numa_demotion_enabled &&
+		    next_demotion_node(pgdat->node_id) != NUMA_NO_NODE) {
+			unsigned long promote_mark;
+
+			promote_mark = min(NUMA_BALANCING_PROMOTE_WATERMARK,
+					   pgdat->node_present_pages >> 6);
+			mark += promote_mark;
+		}
 		if (zone_watermark_ok_safe(zone, order, mark, highest_zoneidx))
 			return true;
 	}
-- 
2.30.2