Re: [PATCH v8 6/6] zswap: shrinks zswap pool based on memory pressure

From: Chengming Zhou
Date: Wed Dec 06 2023 - 00:51:32 EST


On 2023/12/1 03:40, Nhat Pham wrote:
> Currently, we only shrink the zswap pool when the user-defined limit is
> hit. This means that if we set the limit too high, cold data that are
> unlikely to be used again will reside in the pool, wasting precious
> memory. It is hard to predict how much zswap space will be needed ahead
> of time, as this depends on the workload (specifically, on factors such
> as memory access patterns and compressibility of the memory pages).
>
> This patch implements a memcg- and NUMA-aware shrinker for zswap, that
> is initiated when there is memory pressure. The shrinker does not
> have any parameter that must be tuned by the user, and can be opted in
> or out on a per-memcg basis.
>
> Furthermore, to make it more robust for many workloads and prevent
> overshrinking (i.e evicting warm pages that might be refaulted into
> memory), we build in the following heuristics:
>
> * Estimate the number of warm pages residing in zswap, and attempt to
> protect this region of the zswap LRU.
> * Scale the number of freeable objects by an estimate of the memory
> saving factor. The better zswap compresses the data, the fewer pages
> we will evict to swap (as we will otherwise incur IO for relatively
> small memory saving).
> * During reclaim, if the shrinker encounters a page that is also being
> brought into memory, the shrinker will cautiously terminate its
> shrinking action, as this is a sign that it is touching the warmer
> region of the zswap LRU.
>
> As a proof of concept, we ran the following synthetic benchmark:
> build the linux kernel in a memory-limited cgroup, and allocate some
> cold data in tmpfs to see if the shrinker could write them out and
> improved the overall performance. Depending on the amount of cold data
> generated, we observe from 14% to 35% reduction in kernel CPU time used
> in the kernel builds.
>
> Signed-off-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@xxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> Documentation/admin-guide/mm/zswap.rst | 10 ++
> include/linux/mmzone.h | 2 +
> include/linux/zswap.h | 25 +++-
> mm/Kconfig | 14 ++
> mm/mmzone.c | 1 +
> mm/swap_state.c | 2 +
> mm/zswap.c | 185 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-
> 7 files changed, 233 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/zswap.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/zswap.rst
> index 45b98390e938..62fc244ec702 100644
> --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/zswap.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/zswap.rst
> @@ -153,6 +153,16 @@ attribute, e. g.::
>
> Setting this parameter to 100 will disable the hysteresis.
>
> +When there is a sizable amount of cold memory residing in the zswap pool, it
> +can be advantageous to proactively write these cold pages to swap and reclaim
> +the memory for other use cases. By default, the zswap shrinker is disabled.
> +User can enable it as follows:
> +
> + echo Y > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/shrinker_enabled
> +
> +This can be enabled at the boot time if ``CONFIG_ZSWAP_SHRINKER_DEFAULT_ON`` is
> +selected.
> +
> A debugfs interface is provided for various statistic about pool size, number
> of pages stored, same-value filled pages and various counters for the reasons
> pages are rejected.
> diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> index 7b1816450bfc..b23bc5390240 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> @@ -22,6 +22,7 @@
> #include <linux/mm_types.h>
> #include <linux/page-flags.h>
> #include <linux/local_lock.h>
> +#include <linux/zswap.h>
> #include <asm/page.h>
>
> /* Free memory management - zoned buddy allocator. */
> @@ -641,6 +642,7 @@ struct lruvec {
> #ifdef CONFIG_MEMCG
> struct pglist_data *pgdat;
> #endif
> + struct zswap_lruvec_state zswap_lruvec_state;
> };
>
> /* Isolate for asynchronous migration */
> diff --git a/include/linux/zswap.h b/include/linux/zswap.h
> index e571e393669b..08c240e16a01 100644
> --- a/include/linux/zswap.h
> +++ b/include/linux/zswap.h
> @@ -5,20 +5,40 @@
> #include <linux/types.h>
> #include <linux/mm_types.h>
>
> +struct lruvec;
> +
> extern u64 zswap_pool_total_size;
> extern atomic_t zswap_stored_pages;
>
> #ifdef CONFIG_ZSWAP
>
> +struct zswap_lruvec_state {
> + /*
> + * Number of pages in zswap that should be protected from the shrinker.
> + * This number is an estimate of the following counts:
> + *
> + * a) Recent page faults.
> + * b) Recent insertion to the zswap LRU. This includes new zswap stores,
> + * as well as recent zswap LRU rotations.
> + *
> + * These pages are likely to be warm, and might incur IO if the are written
> + * to swap.
> + */
> + atomic_long_t nr_zswap_protected;
> +};
> +
> bool zswap_store(struct folio *folio);
> bool zswap_load(struct folio *folio);
> void zswap_invalidate(int type, pgoff_t offset);
> void zswap_swapon(int type);
> void zswap_swapoff(int type);
> void zswap_memcg_offline_cleanup(struct mem_cgroup *memcg);
> -
> +void zswap_lruvec_state_init(struct lruvec *lruvec);
> +void zswap_page_swapin(struct page *page);
> #else
>
> +struct zswap_lruvec_state {};
> +
> static inline bool zswap_store(struct folio *folio)
> {
> return false;
> @@ -33,7 +53,8 @@ static inline void zswap_invalidate(int type, pgoff_t offset) {}
> static inline void zswap_swapon(int type) {}
> static inline void zswap_swapoff(int type) {}
> static inline void zswap_memcg_offline_cleanup(struct mem_cgroup *memcg) {}
> -
> +static inline void zswap_lruvec_state_init(struct lruvec *lruvec) {}
> +static inline void zswap_page_swapin(struct page *page) {}
> #endif
>
> #endif /* _LINUX_ZSWAP_H */
> diff --git a/mm/Kconfig b/mm/Kconfig
> index 57cd378c73d6..ca87cdb72f11 100644
> --- a/mm/Kconfig
> +++ b/mm/Kconfig
> @@ -61,6 +61,20 @@ config ZSWAP_EXCLUSIVE_LOADS_DEFAULT_ON
> The cost is that if the page was never dirtied and needs to be
> swapped out again, it will be re-compressed.
>
> +config ZSWAP_SHRINKER_DEFAULT_ON
> + bool "Shrink the zswap pool on memory pressure"
> + depends on ZSWAP
> + default n
> + help
> + If selected, the zswap shrinker will be enabled, and the pages
> + stored in the zswap pool will become available for reclaim (i.e
> + written back to the backing swap device) on memory pressure.
> +
> + This means that zswap writeback could happen even if the pool is
> + not yet full, or the cgroup zswap limit has not been reached,
> + reducing the chance that cold pages will reside in the zswap pool
> + and consume memory indefinitely.
> +
> choice
> prompt "Default compressor"
> depends on ZSWAP
> diff --git a/mm/mmzone.c b/mm/mmzone.c
> index b594d3f268fe..c01896eca736 100644
> --- a/mm/mmzone.c
> +++ b/mm/mmzone.c
> @@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ void lruvec_init(struct lruvec *lruvec)
>
> memset(lruvec, 0, sizeof(struct lruvec));
> spin_lock_init(&lruvec->lru_lock);
> + zswap_lruvec_state_init(lruvec);
>
> for_each_lru(lru)
> INIT_LIST_HEAD(&lruvec->lists[lru]);
> diff --git a/mm/swap_state.c b/mm/swap_state.c
> index 6c84236382f3..c597cec606e4 100644
> --- a/mm/swap_state.c
> +++ b/mm/swap_state.c
> @@ -687,6 +687,7 @@ struct page *swap_cluster_readahead(swp_entry_t entry, gfp_t gfp_mask,
> &page_allocated, false);
> if (unlikely(page_allocated))
> swap_readpage(page, false, NULL);
> + zswap_page_swapin(page);
> return page;
> }
>
> @@ -862,6 +863,7 @@ static struct page *swap_vma_readahead(swp_entry_t targ_entry, gfp_t gfp_mask,
> &page_allocated, false);
> if (unlikely(page_allocated))
> swap_readpage(page, false, NULL);
> + zswap_page_swapin(page);
> return page;
> }
>
> diff --git a/mm/zswap.c b/mm/zswap.c
> index 49b79393e472..0f086ffd7b6a 100644
> --- a/mm/zswap.c
> +++ b/mm/zswap.c
> @@ -148,6 +148,11 @@ module_param_named(exclusive_loads, zswap_exclusive_loads_enabled, bool, 0644);
> /* Number of zpools in zswap_pool (empirically determined for scalability) */
> #define ZSWAP_NR_ZPOOLS 32
>
> +/* Enable/disable memory pressure-based shrinker. */
> +static bool zswap_shrinker_enabled = IS_ENABLED(
> + CONFIG_ZSWAP_SHRINKER_DEFAULT_ON);
> +module_param_named(shrinker_enabled, zswap_shrinker_enabled, bool, 0644);
> +
> /*********************************
> * data structures
> **********************************/
> @@ -177,6 +182,8 @@ struct zswap_pool {
> char tfm_name[CRYPTO_MAX_ALG_NAME];
> struct list_lru list_lru;
> struct mem_cgroup *next_shrink;
> + struct shrinker *shrinker;
> + atomic_t nr_stored;
> };
>
> /*
> @@ -275,17 +282,26 @@ static bool zswap_can_accept(void)
> DIV_ROUND_UP(zswap_pool_total_size, PAGE_SIZE);
> }
>
> +static u64 get_zswap_pool_size(struct zswap_pool *pool)
> +{
> + u64 pool_size = 0;
> + int i;
> +
> + for (i = 0; i < ZSWAP_NR_ZPOOLS; i++)
> + pool_size += zpool_get_total_size(pool->zpools[i]);
> +
> + return pool_size;
> +}
> +
> static void zswap_update_total_size(void)
> {
> struct zswap_pool *pool;
> u64 total = 0;
> - int i;
>
> rcu_read_lock();
>
> list_for_each_entry_rcu(pool, &zswap_pools, list)
> - for (i = 0; i < ZSWAP_NR_ZPOOLS; i++)
> - total += zpool_get_total_size(pool->zpools[i]);
> + total += get_zswap_pool_size(pool);
>
> rcu_read_unlock();
>
> @@ -344,13 +360,34 @@ static void zswap_entry_cache_free(struct zswap_entry *entry)
> kmem_cache_free(zswap_entry_cache, entry);
> }
>
> +/*********************************
> +* zswap lruvec functions
> +**********************************/
> +void zswap_lruvec_state_init(struct lruvec *lruvec)
> +{
> + atomic_long_set(&lruvec->zswap_lruvec_state.nr_zswap_protected, 0);
> +}
> +
> +void zswap_page_swapin(struct page *page)
> +{
> + struct lruvec *lruvec;
> +
> + if (page) {
> + lruvec = folio_lruvec(page_folio(page));
> + atomic_long_inc(&lruvec->zswap_lruvec_state.nr_zswap_protected);
> + }
> +}
> +
> /*********************************
> * lru functions
> **********************************/
> static void zswap_lru_add(struct list_lru *list_lru, struct zswap_entry *entry)
> {
> + atomic_long_t *nr_zswap_protected;
> + unsigned long lru_size, old, new;
> int nid = entry_to_nid(entry);
> struct mem_cgroup *memcg;
> + struct lruvec *lruvec;
>
> /*
> * Note that it is safe to use rcu_read_lock() here, even in the face of
> @@ -368,6 +405,19 @@ static void zswap_lru_add(struct list_lru *list_lru, struct zswap_entry *entry)
> memcg = mem_cgroup_from_entry(entry);
> /* will always succeed */
> list_lru_add(list_lru, &entry->lru, nid, memcg);
> +
> + /* Update the protection area */
> + lru_size = list_lru_count_one(list_lru, nid, memcg);
> + lruvec = mem_cgroup_lruvec(memcg, NODE_DATA(nid));
> + nr_zswap_protected = &lruvec->zswap_lruvec_state.nr_zswap_protected;
> + old = atomic_long_inc_return(nr_zswap_protected);
> + /*
> + * Decay to avoid overflow and adapt to changing workloads.
> + * This is based on LRU reclaim cost decaying heuristics.
> + */
> + do {
> + new = old > lru_size / 4 ? old / 2 : old;
> + } while (!atomic_long_try_cmpxchg(nr_zswap_protected, &old, new));
> rcu_read_unlock();
> }
>
> @@ -389,6 +439,7 @@ static void zswap_lru_putback(struct list_lru *list_lru,
> int nid = entry_to_nid(entry);
> spinlock_t *lock = &list_lru->node[nid].lock;
> struct mem_cgroup *memcg;
> + struct lruvec *lruvec;
>
> rcu_read_lock();
> memcg = mem_cgroup_from_entry(entry);
> @@ -396,6 +447,10 @@ static void zswap_lru_putback(struct list_lru *list_lru,
> /* we cannot use list_lru_add here, because it increments node's lru count */
> list_lru_putback(list_lru, &entry->lru, nid, memcg);
> spin_unlock(lock);
> +
> + lruvec = mem_cgroup_lruvec(memcg, NODE_DATA(entry_to_nid(entry)));
> + /* increment the protection area to account for the LRU rotation. */
> + atomic_long_inc(&lruvec->zswap_lruvec_state.nr_zswap_protected);
> rcu_read_unlock();
> }
>
> @@ -485,6 +540,7 @@ static void zswap_free_entry(struct zswap_entry *entry)
> else {
> zswap_lru_del(&entry->pool->list_lru, entry);
> zpool_free(zswap_find_zpool(entry), entry->handle);
> + atomic_dec(&entry->pool->nr_stored);
> zswap_pool_put(entry->pool);
> }
> zswap_entry_cache_free(entry);
> @@ -526,6 +582,102 @@ static struct zswap_entry *zswap_entry_find_get(struct rb_root *root,
> return entry;
> }
>
> +/*********************************
> +* shrinker functions
> +**********************************/
> +static enum lru_status shrink_memcg_cb(struct list_head *item, struct list_lru_one *l,
> + spinlock_t *lock, void *arg);
> +
> +static unsigned long zswap_shrinker_scan(struct shrinker *shrinker,
> + struct shrink_control *sc)
> +{
> + struct lruvec *lruvec = mem_cgroup_lruvec(sc->memcg, NODE_DATA(sc->nid));
> + unsigned long shrink_ret, nr_protected, lru_size;
> + struct zswap_pool *pool = shrinker->private_data;
> + bool encountered_page_in_swapcache = false;
> +
> + nr_protected =
> + atomic_long_read(&lruvec->zswap_lruvec_state.nr_zswap_protected);
> + lru_size = list_lru_shrink_count(&pool->list_lru, sc);
> +
> + /*
> + * Abort if the shrinker is disabled or if we are shrinking into the
> + * protected region.
> + *
> + * This short-circuiting is necessary because if we have too many multiple
> + * concurrent reclaimers getting the freeable zswap object counts at the
> + * same time (before any of them made reasonable progress), the total
> + * number of reclaimed objects might be more than the number of unprotected
> + * objects (i.e the reclaimers will reclaim into the protected area of the
> + * zswap LRU).
> + */
> + if (!zswap_shrinker_enabled || nr_protected >= lru_size - sc->nr_to_scan) {
> + sc->nr_scanned = 0;
> + return SHRINK_STOP;
> + }
> +
> + shrink_ret = list_lru_shrink_walk(&pool->list_lru, sc, &shrink_memcg_cb,
> + &encountered_page_in_swapcache);
> +
> + if (encountered_page_in_swapcache)
> + return SHRINK_STOP;
> +
> + return shrink_ret ? shrink_ret : SHRINK_STOP;
> +}
> +
> +static unsigned long zswap_shrinker_count(struct shrinker *shrinker,
> + struct shrink_control *sc)
> +{
> + struct zswap_pool *pool = shrinker->private_data;
> + struct mem_cgroup *memcg = sc->memcg;
> + struct lruvec *lruvec = mem_cgroup_lruvec(memcg, NODE_DATA(sc->nid));
> + unsigned long nr_backing, nr_stored, nr_freeable, nr_protected;
> +
> +#ifdef CONFIG_MEMCG_KMEM
> + cgroup_rstat_flush(memcg->css.cgroup);
> + nr_backing = memcg_page_state(memcg, MEMCG_ZSWAP_B) >> PAGE_SHIFT;
> + nr_stored = memcg_page_state(memcg, MEMCG_ZSWAPPED);
> +#else
> + /* use pool stats instead of memcg stats */
> + nr_backing = get_zswap_pool_size(pool) >> PAGE_SHIFT;
> + nr_stored = atomic_read(&pool->nr_stored);
> +#endif
> +
> + if (!zswap_shrinker_enabled || !nr_stored)
When I tested with this series, with !zswap_shrinker_enabled in the default case,
I found the performance is much worse than that without this patch.

Testcase: memory.max=2G, zswap enabled, kernel build -j32 in a tmpfs directory.

The reason seems the above cgroup_rstat_flush(), caused much rstat lock contention
to the zswap_store() path. And if I put the "zswap_shrinker_enabled" check above
the cgroup_rstat_flush(), the performance become much better.

Maybe we can put the "zswap_shrinker_enabled" check above cgroup_rstat_flush()?

Thanks!

> + return 0;
> +
> + nr_protected =
> + atomic_long_read(&lruvec->zswap_lruvec_state.nr_zswap_protected);
> + nr_freeable = list_lru_shrink_count(&pool->list_lru, sc);
> + /*
> + * Subtract the lru size by an estimate of the number of pages
> + * that should be protected.
> + */
> + nr_freeable = nr_freeable > nr_protected ? nr_freeable - nr_protected : 0;
> +
> + /*
> + * Scale the number of freeable pages by the memory saving factor.
> + * This ensures that the better zswap compresses memory, the fewer
> + * pages we will evict to swap (as it will otherwise incur IO for
> + * relatively small memory saving).
> + */
> + return mult_frac(nr_freeable, nr_backing, nr_stored);
> +}
> +
> +static void zswap_alloc_shrinker(struct zswap_pool *pool)
> +{
> + pool->shrinker =
> + shrinker_alloc(SHRINKER_NUMA_AWARE | SHRINKER_MEMCG_AWARE, "mm-zswap");
> + if (!pool->shrinker)
> + return;
> +
> + pool->shrinker->private_data = pool;
> + pool->shrinker->scan_objects = zswap_shrinker_scan;
> + pool->shrinker->count_objects = zswap_shrinker_count;
> + pool->shrinker->batch = 0;
> + pool->shrinker->seeks = DEFAULT_SEEKS;
> +}
> +
> /*********************************
> * per-cpu code
> **********************************/
> @@ -721,6 +873,7 @@ static enum lru_status shrink_memcg_cb(struct list_head *item, struct list_lru_o
> spinlock_t *lock, void *arg)
> {
> struct zswap_entry *entry = container_of(item, struct zswap_entry, lru);
> + bool *encountered_page_in_swapcache = (bool *)arg;
> struct zswap_tree *tree;
> pgoff_t swpoffset;
> enum lru_status ret = LRU_REMOVED_RETRY;
> @@ -756,6 +909,17 @@ static enum lru_status shrink_memcg_cb(struct list_head *item, struct list_lru_o
> zswap_reject_reclaim_fail++;
> zswap_lru_putback(&entry->pool->list_lru, entry);
> ret = LRU_RETRY;
> +
> + /*
> + * Encountering a page already in swap cache is a sign that we are shrinking
> + * into the warmer region. We should terminate shrinking (if we're in the dynamic
> + * shrinker context).
> + */
> + if (writeback_result == -EEXIST && encountered_page_in_swapcache) {
> + ret = LRU_SKIP;
> + *encountered_page_in_swapcache = true;
> + }
> +
> goto put_unlock;
> }
> zswap_written_back_pages++;
> @@ -913,6 +1077,11 @@ static struct zswap_pool *zswap_pool_create(char *type, char *compressor)
> &pool->node);
> if (ret)
> goto error;
> +
> + zswap_alloc_shrinker(pool);
> + if (!pool->shrinker)
> + goto error;
> +
> pr_debug("using %s compressor\n", pool->tfm_name);
>
> /* being the current pool takes 1 ref; this func expects the
> @@ -920,13 +1089,19 @@ static struct zswap_pool *zswap_pool_create(char *type, char *compressor)
> */
> kref_init(&pool->kref);
> INIT_LIST_HEAD(&pool->list);
> - list_lru_init_memcg(&pool->list_lru, NULL);
> + if (list_lru_init_memcg(&pool->list_lru, pool->shrinker))
> + goto lru_fail;
> + shrinker_register(pool->shrinker);
> INIT_WORK(&pool->shrink_work, shrink_worker);
> + atomic_set(&pool->nr_stored, 0);
>
> zswap_pool_debug("created", pool);
>
> return pool;
>
> +lru_fail:
> + list_lru_destroy(&pool->list_lru);
> + shrinker_free(pool->shrinker);
> error:
> if (pool->acomp_ctx)
> free_percpu(pool->acomp_ctx);
> @@ -984,6 +1159,7 @@ static void zswap_pool_destroy(struct zswap_pool *pool)
>
> zswap_pool_debug("destroying", pool);
>
> + shrinker_free(pool->shrinker);
> cpuhp_state_remove_instance(CPUHP_MM_ZSWP_POOL_PREPARE, &pool->node);
> free_percpu(pool->acomp_ctx);
> list_lru_destroy(&pool->list_lru);
> @@ -1540,6 +1716,7 @@ bool zswap_store(struct folio *folio)
> if (entry->length) {
> INIT_LIST_HEAD(&entry->lru);
> zswap_lru_add(&entry->pool->list_lru, entry);
> + atomic_inc(&entry->pool->nr_stored);
> }
> spin_unlock(&tree->lock);
>