Re: [PATCH-mm v2] mm/list_lru: Optimize memcg_reparent_list_lru_node()

[Roman Gushchin]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 10:12:48PM -0500, Waiman Long wrote:
> On 3/8/22 21:13, Roman Gushchin wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 08:18:24PM -0500, Waiman Long wrote:
> > > Since commit 2c80cd57c743 ("mm/list_lru.c: fix list_lru_count_node()
> > > to be race free"), we are tracking the total number of lru
> > > entries in a list_lru_node in its nr_items field.  In the case of
> > > memcg_reparent_list_lru_node(), there is nothing to be done if nr_items
> > > is 0.  We don't even need to take the nlru->lock as no new lru entry
> > > could be added by a racing list_lru_add() to the draining src_idx memcg
> > > at this point.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > >   mm/list_lru.c | 6 ++++++
> > >   1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
> > > 
> > > diff --git a/mm/list_lru.c b/mm/list_lru.c
> > > index ba76428ceece..c669d87001a6 100644
> > > --- a/mm/list_lru.c
> > > +++ b/mm/list_lru.c
> > > @@ -394,6 +394,12 @@ static void memcg_reparent_list_lru_node(struct list_lru *lru, int nid,
> > >   	int dst_idx = dst_memcg->kmemcg_id;
> > >   	struct list_lru_one *src, *dst;
> > > +	/*
> > > +	 * If there is no lru entry in this nlru, we can skip it immediately.
> > > +	 */
> > > +	if (!READ_ONCE(nlru->nr_items))
> > > +		return;
> > This is a per-node counter, not a per-memcg, right?
> Right. list_lru_node is a per-node structure inside list_lru.
> > If so, do we optimize for the case when all lru items belong to one node and
> > others are empty?
> 
> That is actually the case that I am trying to optimize for.
> 
> If a system has many containers. It is also likely each container may mount
> one or more container specific filesystems. Since a container likely use
> just a few cpus, it is highly that only the list_lru_node that contains
> those cpus will be utilized while the rests may be empty.
> 
> I got the idea of doing this patch when I was looking at a crash dump
> related to the list_lru code. That particular crash dump has more than 13k
> list_lru's and thousands of mount points. I had notice even if nr_items of a
> list_lru_node is 0, it still tries to transfer lru entries from source idx
> to dest idx. Without doing an lock/unlock and loading a cacheline from the
> memcg_lrus, it can save some time. That can be substantial saving if we are
> talking about thousands of list_lru's.

Cool! Makes total sense to me. Thanks for the explanation!
Would you mind to add this text to the commit log?

Reviewed-by: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@xxxxxxxxx>

Thanks!