Re: [PATCH v6 5/9] mm: multigenerational lru: mm_struct list

[Yu Zhao]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 04:21:53PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Fri 07-01-22 17:19:28, Yu Zhao wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 10:06:15AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Tue 04-01-22 13:22:24, Yu Zhao wrote:
> > > > To exploit spatial locality, the aging prefers to walk page tables to
> > > > search for young PTEs. And this patch paves the way for that.
> > > > 
> > > > An mm_struct list is maintained for each memcg, and an mm_struct
> > > > follows its owner task to the new memcg when this task is migrated.
> > > 
> > > How does this work actually for the memcg reclaim? I can see you
> > > lru_gen_migrate_mm on the task migration. My concern is, though, that
> > > such a task leaves all the memory behind in the previous memcg (in
> > > cgroup v2, in v1 you can opt in for charge migration). If you move the
> > > mm to a new memcg then you age it somewhere where the memory is not
> > > really consumed.
> > 
> > There are two options to gather the accessed bit: page table walks and
> > rmap walks. Page table walks sweep dense hotspots that are NOT
> > misplaced in terms of reclaim scope (lruvec); rmap walks cover what
> > page table walks miss, e.g., misplaced dense hotspots or sparse ones.
> > 
> > Dense hotspots are stored in Bloom filters for each lruvec.
> > 
> > If an mm leaves everything in the old memcg, page table walks in the
> > new memcg reclaim path basically ignore this mm after the first scan,
> > because everything is misplaced.
> 
> OK, so do I get it right that pages mapped from a different memcg than
> the reclaimed one are considered effectivelly non-present from the the
> reclaim logic POV? This would be worth mentioning in the migration
> callback because it is not really that straightforward to put those two
> together.

That's correct. Will document this in detail.

> > In the old memcg reclaim path, page table walks won't see this mm
> > at all. But rmap walks will catch everything later in the eviction
> > path, i.e., lru_gen_look_around(). This function is less efficient
> > compared with page table walks because, for each rmap walk of a
> > non-shared page, it only can gather the accessed bit from 64 PTEs at
> > most. But it's still a lot faster than the original rmap, which only
> > gathers the accessed bit from a single PTE, for each walk of a
> > non-shared page.
> 
> Again, something that should be really documented.

Noted.