[RFC PATCH V1 2/6] sched/numa: Add disjoint vma unconditional scan logic

From: Raghavendra K T
Date: Tue Aug 29 2023 - 02:08:21 EST


Since commit fc137c0ddab2 ("sched/numa: enhance vma scanning logic")
VMA scanning is allowed if:
1) The task had accessed the VMA.
Rationale: Reduce overhead for the tasks that had not
touched VMA. Also filter out unnecessary scanning.

2) Early phase of the VMA scan where mm->numa_scan_seq is less than 2.
Rationale: Understanding initial characteristics of VMAs and also
prevent VMA scanning unfairness.

While that works for most of the times to reduce scanning overhead,
there are some corner cases associated with it.

Problem statement (Disjoint VMA set):
======================================
Let's look at some of the corner cases with a below example of tasks and their
access pattern.

Consider N tasks (threads) of a process.
Set1 tasks accessing vma_x (group of VMAs)
Set2 tasks accessing vma_y (group of VMAs)

Set1 Set2
------------------- --------------------
| task_1..task_n/2 | | task_n/2+1..task_n |
------------------- --------------------
| |
V V
------------------- --------------------
| vma_x | | vma_y |
------------------- --------------------

Corner cases:
(a) Out of N tasks, not all of them gets fair opportunity to scan. (PeterZ).
suppose Set1 tasks gets more opportunity to scan (May be because of the
activity pattern of tasks or other reasons in current design) in the above
example, then vma_x gets scanned more number of times than vma_y.

some experiment is also done here which illustrates this unfairness:
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/c730dee0-a711-8a8e-3eb1-1bfdd21e6add@xxxxxxx/

(b) Sizes of vmas can differ.
Suppose size of vma_y is far greater than the size of vma_x, then a bigger
portion of vma_y can potentially be left unscanned since scanning is bounded
by scan_size of 256MB (default) for each iteration.

(c) Highly active threads trap a few VMAs frequently, and some of the VMAs not
accessed for long time can potentially get starved of scanning indefinitely
(Mel). There is a possibility of lack of enough hints/details about VMAs if it
is needed later for migration.

(d) Allocation of memory in some specific manner (Mel).
One example could be, Suppose a main thread allocates memory and it is not
active. When other threads tries to act upon it, they may not have much
hints about it, if the corresponding VMA was not scanned.

(e) VMAs that are created after two full scans of mm (mm->numa_scan_seq > 2)
will never get scanned. (Observed rarely but very much possible depending on
workload behaviour).

Above this, a combination of some of the above (e.g., (a) and (b)) can
potentially amplifyi/worsen the side effect.

Current patch tries to address the above issues by enhancing unconditional
VMA scanning logic.

High level idea:
Depending on vma_size, populate a per vma_scan_select value, decrement it
and when it hits zero do force scan (Mel).
vma_scan_select value is again repopulated when it hits zero.

Results:
======
Base: 6.5.0-rc6+ (4853c74bd7ab)
SUT: Milan w/ 2 numa nodes 256 cpus

mmtest numa01_THREAD_ALLOC manual run:
base patched
real 1m22.758s 1m9.200s
user 249m49.540s 229m30.039s
sys 0m25.040s 3m10.451s

numa_pte_updates 6985 1573363
numa_hint_faults 2705 1022623
numa_hint_faults_local 2279 389633
numa_pages_migrated 426 632990

Reported-by: Aithal Srikanth <sraithal@xxxxxxx>
Reported-by: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@xxxxxxxxx>
Suggested-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@xxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/mm_types.h | 1 +
kernel/sched/fair.c | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
2 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mm_types.h b/include/linux/mm_types.h
index 5e74ce4a28cd..647d9fc5da8d 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm_types.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm_types.h
@@ -479,6 +479,7 @@ struct vma_numab_state {
unsigned long next_scan;
unsigned long next_pid_reset;
unsigned long access_pids[2];
+ unsigned long vma_scan_select;
};

/*
diff --git a/kernel/sched/fair.c b/kernel/sched/fair.c
index 2f2e1568c1d4..23375c10f36e 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/fair.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c
@@ -2928,6 +2928,36 @@ static void reset_ptenuma_scan(struct task_struct *p)
p->mm->numa_scan_offset = 0;
}

+#define VMA_4M (1U << 22)
+#define VMA_RATELIMIT_SCALEDOWN_F 7
+
+static inline unsigned int vma_scan_ratelimit(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
+{
+ unsigned int vma_size, ratelimit = 0;
+
+ /*
+ * Rate limit the scanning of VMA based on the size.
+ * vma_size > 4M allow 1 in 2 times.
+ * vma_size = 4k allow 1 in 9 times.
+ * 4k < vma_size < 4M scale between 2 and 9
+ */
+ vma_size = (vma->vm_end - vma->vm_start);
+ if (vma_size)
+ ratelimit = (VMA_4M / vma_size) >> VMA_RATELIMIT_SCALEDOWN_F;
+ return 1 + ratelimit;
+}
+
+static bool task_disjoint_vma_select(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
+{
+ if (vma->numab_state->vma_scan_select > 0) {
+ vma->numab_state->vma_scan_select--;
+ return false;
+ } else
+ vma->numab_state->vma_scan_select = vma_scan_ratelimit(vma);
+
+ return true;
+}
+
static bool vma_is_accessed(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
unsigned long pids;
@@ -3058,6 +3088,8 @@ static void task_numa_work(struct callback_head *work)
/* Reset happens after 4 times scan delay of scan start */
vma->numab_state->next_pid_reset = vma->numab_state->next_scan +
msecs_to_jiffies(VMA_PID_RESET_PERIOD);
+
+ vma->numab_state->vma_scan_select = 0;
}

/*
@@ -3077,8 +3109,11 @@ static void task_numa_work(struct callback_head *work)
vma->numab_state->access_pids[1] = 0;
}

- /* Do not scan the VMA if task has not accessed */
- if (!vma_is_accessed(vma))
+ /*
+ * Do not scan the VMA if task has not accessed OR it is still
+ an unlucky disjoint vma.
+ */
+ if (!(vma_is_accessed(vma) || task_disjoint_vma_select(vma)))
continue;

do {
--
2.34.1