Re: [PATCH v4 2/7] mm: multi-gen LRU: Have secondary MMUs participate in aging

[Yu Zhao]

On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 7:08 PM James Houghton <jthoughton@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 3:58 PM Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, May 29, 2024, Yu Zhao wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 3:59 PM Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, May 29, 2024, Yu Zhao wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 12:05 PM James Houghton <jthoughton@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Secondary MMUs are currently consulted for access/age information at
> > > > > > eviction time, but before then, we don't get accurate age information.
> > > > > > That is, pages that are mostly accessed through a secondary MMU (like
> > > > > > guest memory, used by KVM) will always just proceed down to the oldest
> > > > > > generation, and then at eviction time, if KVM reports the page to be
> > > > > > young, the page will be activated/promoted back to the youngest
> > > > > > generation.
> > > > >
> > > > > Correct, and as I explained offline, this is the only reasonable
> > > > > behavior if we can't locklessly walk secondary MMUs.
> > > > >
> > > > > Just for the record, the (crude) analogy I used was:
> > > > > Imagine a large room with many bills ($1, $5, $10, ...) on the floor,
> > > > > but you are only allowed to pick up 10 of them (and put them in your
> > > > > pocket). A smart move would be to survey the room *first and then*
> > > > > pick up the largest ones. But if you are carrying a 500 lbs backpack,
> > > > > you would just want to pick up whichever that's in front of you rather
> > > > > than walk the entire room.
> > > > >
> > > > > MGLRU should only scan (or lookaround) secondary MMUs if it can be
> > > > > done lockless. Otherwise, it should just fall back to the existing
> > > > > approach, which existed in previous versions but is removed in this
> > > > > version.
> > > >
> > > > IIUC, by "existing approach" you mean completely ignore secondary MMUs that
> > > > don't implement a lockless walk?
> > >
> > > No, the existing approach only checks secondary MMUs for LRU folios,
> > > i.e., those at the end of the LRU list. It might not find the best
> > > candidates (the coldest ones) on the entire list, but it doesn't pay
> > > as much for the locking. MGLRU can *optionally* scan MMUs (secondary
> > > included) to find the best candidates, but it can only be a win if the
> > > scanning incurs a relatively low overhead, e.g., done locklessly for
> > > the secondary MMU. IOW, this is a balance between the cost of
> > > reclaiming not-so-cold (warm) folios and that of finding the coldest
> > > folios.
> >
> > Gotcha.
> >
> > I tend to agree with Yu, driving the behavior via a Kconfig may generate simpler
> > _code_, but I think it increases the overall system complexity.  E.g. distros
> > will likely enable the Kconfig, and in my experience people using KVM with a
> > distro kernel usually aren't kernel experts, i.e. likely won't know that there's
> > even a decision to be made, let alone be able to make an informed decision.
> >
> > Having an mmu_notifier hook that is conditionally implemented doesn't seem overly
> > complex, e.g. even if there's a runtime aspect at play, it'd be easy enough for
> > KVM to nullify its mmu_notifier hook during initialization.  The hardest part is
> > likely going to be figuring out the threshold for how much overhead is too much.
>
> Hi Yu, Sean,
>
> Perhaps I "simplified" this bit of the series a little bit too much.
> Being able to opportunistically do aging with KVM (even without
> setting the Kconfig) is valuable.
>
> IIUC, we have the following possibilities:
> - v4: aging with KVM is done if the new Kconfig is set.
> - v3: aging with KVM is always done.

This is not true -- in v3, MGLRU only scans secondary MMUs if it can
be done locklessly on x86. It uses a bitmap to imply this requirement.

> - v2: aging with KVM is done when the architecture reports that it can
> probably be done locklessly, set at KVM MMU init time.

Not really -- it's only done if it can be done locklessly on both x86 and arm64.

> - Another possibility?: aging with KVM is only done exactly when it
> can be done locklessly (i.e., mmu_notifier_test/clear_young() called
> such that it will not grab any locks).

This is exactly the case for v2.

> I like the v4 approach because:
> 1. We can choose whether or not to do aging with KVM no matter what
> architecture we're using (without requiring userspace be aware to
> disable the feature at runtime with sysfs to avoid regressing
> performance if they don't care about proactive reclaim).
> 2. If we check the new feature bit (0x8) in sysfs, we can know for
> sure if aging is meant to be working or not. The selftest changes I
> made won't work properly unless there is a way to be sure that aging
> is working with KVM.

I'm not convinced, but it doesn't mean your point of view is invalid.
If you fully understand the implications of your design choice and
document them, I will not object.

All optimizations in v2 were measured step by step. Even that bitmap,
which might be considered overengineered, brought a readily
measuarable 4% improvement in memcached throughput on Altra Max
swapping to Optane:

Using the bitmap (64 KVM PTEs for each call)
============================================================================================================================
Type         Ops/sec     Hits/sec   Misses/sec    Avg. Latency     p50
Latency     p99 Latency   p99.9 Latency       KB/sec
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sets            0.00          ---          ---             ---
    ---             ---             ---         0.00
Gets      1012801.92    431436.92     14965.11         0.06246
0.04700         0.16700         4.31900     39635.83
Waits           0.00          ---          ---             ---
    ---             ---             ---          ---
Totals    1012801.92    431436.92     14965.11         0.06246
0.04700         0.16700         4.31900     39635.83


Not using the bitmap (1 KVM PTEs for each call)
============================================================================================================================
Type         Ops/sec     Hits/sec   Misses/sec    Avg. Latency     p50
Latency     p99 Latency   p99.9 Latency       KB/sec
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sets            0.00          ---          ---             ---
    ---             ---             ---         0.00
Gets       968210.02    412443.85     14303.89         0.06517
0.04700         0.15900         7.42300     37890.74
Waits           0.00          ---          ---             ---
    ---             ---             ---          ---
Totals     968210.02    412443.85     14303.89         0.06517
0.04700         0.15900         7.42300     37890.74


FlameGraphs with bitmap (1.svg) and without bitmap (2.svg) attached.

What I don't think is acceptable is simplifying those optimizations
out without documenting your justifications (I would even call it a
design change, rather than simplification, from v3 to v4).

> For look-around at eviction time:
> - v4: done if the main mm PTE was young and no MMU notifiers are subscribed.
> - v2/v3: done if the main mm PTE was young or (the SPTE was young and
> the MMU notifier was lockless/fast).

The host and secondary MMUs are two *independent* cases, IMO:
1. lookaround the host MMU if the PTE mapping the folio under reclaim is young.
2. lookaround the secondary MMU if it can be done locklessly.

So the v2/v3 behavior sounds a lot more reasonable to me.

Also a nit -- don't use 'else' in the following case (should_look_around()):

  if (foo)
    return bar;
  else
    do_something();

> I made this logic change as part of removing batching.
>
> I'd really appreciate guidance on what the correct thing to do is.
>
> In my mind, what would work great is: by default, do aging exactly
> when KVM can do it locklessly, and then have a Kconfig to always have
> MGLRU to do aging with KVM if a user really cares about proactive
> reclaim (when the feature bit is set). The selftest can check the
> Kconfig + feature bit to know for sure if aging will be done.

I still don't see how that Kconfig helps. Or why the new static branch
isn't enough?






> I'm not sure what the exact right thing to do for look-around is.
>
> Thanks for the quick feedback.

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