Re: [PATCH V4 00/10] mm: page_alloc: freelist migratetype hygiene

From: Baolin Wang
Date: Mon Apr 08 2024 - 05:30:26 EST




On 2024/3/21 02:02, Johannes Weiner wrote:
V4:
- fixed !pcp_order_allowed() case in free_unref_folios()
- reworded the patch 0 changelog a bit for the git log
- rebased to mm-everything-2024-03-19-23-01
- runtime-tested again with various CONFIG_DEBUG_FOOs enabled

---

The page allocator's mobility grouping is intended to keep unmovable
pages separate from reclaimable/compactable ones to allow on-demand
defragmentation for higher-order allocations and huge pages.

Currently, there are several places where accidental type mixing
occurs: an allocation asks for a page of a certain migratetype and
receives another. This ruins pageblocks for compaction, which in turn
makes allocating huge pages more expensive and less reliable.

The series addresses those causes. The last patch adds type checks on
all freelist movements to prevent new violations being introduced.

The benefits can be seen in a mixed workload that stresses the machine
with a memcache-type workload and a kernel build job while
periodically attempting to allocate batches of THP. The following data
is aggregated over 50 consecutive defconfig builds:

VANILLA PATCHED
Hugealloc Time mean 165843.93 ( +0.00%) 113025.88 ( -31.85%)
Hugealloc Time stddev 158957.35 ( +0.00%) 114716.07 ( -27.83%)
Kbuild Real time 310.24 ( +0.00%) 300.73 ( -3.06%)
Kbuild User time 1271.13 ( +0.00%) 1259.42 ( -0.92%)
Kbuild System time 582.02 ( +0.00%) 559.79 ( -3.81%)
THP fault alloc 30585.14 ( +0.00%) 40853.62 ( +33.57%)
THP fault fallback 36626.46 ( +0.00%) 26357.62 ( -28.04%)
THP fault fail rate % 54.49 ( +0.00%) 39.22 ( -27.53%)
Pagealloc fallback 1328.00 ( +0.00%) 1.00 ( -99.85%)
Pagealloc type mismatch 181009.50 ( +0.00%) 0.00 ( -100.00%)
Direct compact stall 434.56 ( +0.00%) 257.66 ( -40.61%)
Direct compact fail 421.70 ( +0.00%) 249.94 ( -40.63%)
Direct compact success 12.86 ( +0.00%) 7.72 ( -37.09%)
Direct compact success rate % 2.86 ( +0.00%) 2.82 ( -0.96%)
Compact daemon scanned migrate 3370059.62 ( +0.00%) 3612054.76 ( +7.18%)
Compact daemon scanned free 7718439.20 ( +0.00%) 5386385.02 ( -30.21%)
Compact direct scanned migrate 309248.62 ( +0.00%) 176721.04 ( -42.85%)
Compact direct scanned free 433582.84 ( +0.00%) 315727.66 ( -27.18%)
Compact migrate scanned daemon % 91.20 ( +0.00%) 94.48 ( +3.56%)
Compact free scanned daemon % 94.58 ( +0.00%) 94.42 ( -0.16%)
Compact total migrate scanned 3679308.24 ( +0.00%) 3788775.80 ( +2.98%)
Compact total free scanned 8152022.04 ( +0.00%) 5702112.68 ( -30.05%)
Alloc stall 872.04 ( +0.00%) 5156.12 ( +490.71%)
Pages kswapd scanned 510645.86 ( +0.00%) 3394.94 ( -99.33%)
Pages kswapd reclaimed 134811.62 ( +0.00%) 2701.26 ( -98.00%)
Pages direct scanned 99546.06 ( +0.00%) 376407.52 ( +278.12%)
Pages direct reclaimed 62123.40 ( +0.00%) 289535.70 ( +366.06%)
Pages total scanned 610191.92 ( +0.00%) 379802.46 ( -37.76%)
Pages scanned kswapd % 76.36 ( +0.00%) 0.10 ( -98.58%)
Swap out 12057.54 ( +0.00%) 15022.98 ( +24.59%)
Swap in 209.16 ( +0.00%) 256.48 ( +22.52%)
File refaults 17701.64 ( +0.00%) 11765.40 ( -33.53%)

Huge page success rate is higher, allocation latencies are shorter and
more predictable.

Stealing (fallback) rate is drastically reduced. Notably, while the
vanilla kernel keeps doing fallbacks on an ongoing basis, the patched
kernel enters a steady state once the distribution of block types is
adequate for the workload. Steals over 50 runs:

VANILLA PATCHED
1504.0 227.0
1557.0 6.0
1391.0 13.0
1080.0 26.0
1057.0 40.0
1156.0 6.0
805.0 46.0
736.0 20.0
1747.0 2.0
1699.0 34.0
1269.0 13.0
1858.0 12.0
907.0 4.0
727.0 2.0
563.0 2.0
3094.0 2.0
10211.0 3.0
2621.0 1.0
5508.0 2.0
1060.0 2.0
538.0 3.0
5773.0 2.0
2199.0 0.0
3781.0 2.0
1387.0 1.0
4977.0 0.0
2865.0 1.0
1814.0 1.0
3739.0 1.0
6857.0 0.0
382.0 0.0
407.0 1.0
3784.0 0.0
297.0 0.0
298.0 0.0
6636.0 0.0
4188.0 0.0
242.0 0.0
9960.0 0.0
5816.0 0.0
354.0 0.0
287.0 0.0
261.0 0.0
140.0 1.0
2065.0 0.0
312.0 0.0
331.0 0.0
164.0 0.0
465.0 1.0
219.0 0.0

Type mismatches are down too. Those count every time an allocation
request asks for one migratetype and gets another. This can still
occur minimally in the patched kernel due to non-stealing fallbacks,
but it's quite rare and follows the pattern of overall fallbacks -
once the block type distribution settles, mismatches cease as well:

VANILLA: PATCHED:
182602.0 268.0
135794.0 20.0
88619.0 19.0
95973.0 0.0
129590.0 0.0
129298.0 0.0
147134.0 0.0
230854.0 0.0
239709.0 0.0
137670.0 0.0
132430.0 0.0
65712.0 0.0
57901.0 0.0
67506.0 0.0
63565.0 4.0
34806.0 0.0
42962.0 0.0
32406.0 0.0
38668.0 0.0
61356.0 0.0
57800.0 0.0
41435.0 0.0
83456.0 0.0
65048.0 0.0
28955.0 0.0
47597.0 0.0
75117.0 0.0
55564.0 0.0
38280.0 0.0
52404.0 0.0
26264.0 0.0
37538.0 0.0
19671.0 0.0
30936.0 0.0
26933.0 0.0
16962.0 0.0
44554.0 0.0
46352.0 0.0
24995.0 0.0
35152.0 0.0
12823.0 0.0
21583.0 0.0
18129.0 0.0
31693.0 0.0
28745.0 0.0
33308.0 0.0
31114.0 0.0
35034.0 0.0
12111.0 0.0
24885.0 0.0

Compaction work is markedly reduced despite much better THP rates.

In the vanilla kernel, reclaim seems to have been driven primarily by
watermark boosting that happens as a result of fallbacks. With those
all but eliminated, watermarks average lower and kswapd does less
work. The uptick in direct reclaim is because THP requests have to
fend for themselves more often - which is intended policy right
now. Aggregate reclaim activity is lowered significantly, though.

---

With my 2 fixes, the whole series works well on my platform, so please feel free to add:
Tested-by: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>