Re: [PATCH] zswap/zsmalloc: prefer the the original page's node for compressed data

[Johannes Weiner]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2025 at 12:11:45PM -0700, Nhat Pham wrote:
> Currently, zsmalloc, zswap's backend memory allocator, does not enforce
> any policy for the allocation of memory for the compressed data,
> instead just adopting the memory policy of the task entering reclaim,
> or the default policy (prefer local node) if no such policy is
> specified. This can lead to several pathological behaviors in
> multi-node NUMA systems:
> 
> 1. Systems with CXL-based memory tiering can encounter the following
>    inversion with zswap: the coldest pages demoted to the CXL tier
>    can return to the high tier when they are zswapped out, creating
>    memory pressure on the high tier.
> 
> 2. Consider a direct reclaimer scanning nodes in order of allocation
>    preference. If it ventures into remote nodes, the memory it
>    compresses there should stay there. Trying to shift those contents
>    over to the reclaiming thread's preferred node further *increases*
>    its local pressure, and provoking more spills. The remote node is
>    also the most likely to refault this data again. This undesirable
>    behavior was pointed out by Johannes Weiner in [1].
> 
> 3. For zswap writeback, the zswap entries are organized in
>    node-specific LRUs, based on the node placement of the original
>    pages, allowing for targeted zswap writeback for specific nodes.
> 
>    However, the compressed data of a zswap entry can be placed on a
>    different node from the LRU it is placed on. This means that reclaim
>    targeted at one node might not free up memory used for zswap entries
>    in that node, but instead reclaiming memory in a different node.
> 
> All of these issues will be resolved if the compressed data go to the
> same node as the original page. This patch encourages this behavior by
> having zswap pass the node of the original page to zsmalloc, and have
> zsmalloc prefer the specified node if we need to allocate new (zs)pages
> for the compressed data.
> 
> Note that we are not strictly binding the allocation to the preferred
> node. We still allow the allocation to fall back to other nodes when
> the preferred node is full, or if we have zspages with slots available
> on a different node. This is OK, and still a strict improvement over
> the status quo:
> 
> 1. On a system with demotion enabled, we will generally prefer
>    demotions over zswapping, and only zswap when pages have
>    already gone to the lowest tier. This patch should achieve the
>    desired effect for the most part.
> 
> 2. If the preferred node is out of memory, letting the compressed data
>    going to other nodes can be better than the alternative (OOMs,
>    keeping cold memory unreclaimed, disk swapping, etc.).
> 
> 3. If the allocation go to a separate node because we have a zspage
>    with slots available, at least we're not creating extra immediate
>    memory pressure (since the space is already allocated).
> 
> 3. While there can be mixings, we generally reclaim pages in
>    same-node batches, which encourage zspage grouping that is more
>    likely to go to the right node.
> 
> 4. A strict binding would require partitioning zsmalloc by node, which
>    is more complicated, and more prone to regression, since it reduces
>    the storage density of zsmalloc. We need to evaluate the tradeoff
>    and benchmark carefully before adopting such an involved solution.
> 
> This patch does not fix zram, leaving its memory allocation behavior
> unchanged. We leave this effort to future work.

zram's zs_malloc() calls all have page context. It seems a lot easier
to just fix the bug for them as well than to have two allocation APIs
and verbose commentary?

> -static inline struct zpdesc *alloc_zpdesc(gfp_t gfp)
> +static inline struct zpdesc *alloc_zpdesc(gfp_t gfp, const int *nid)
>  {
> -	struct page *page = alloc_page(gfp);
> +	struct page *page;
> +
> +	if (nid)
> +		page = alloc_pages_node(*nid, gfp, 0);
> +	else {
> +		/*
> +		 * XXX: this is the zram path. We should consider fixing zram to also
> +		 * use alloc_pages_node() and prefer the same node as the original page.
> +		 *
> +		 * Note that alloc_pages_node(NUMA_NO_NODE, gfp, 0) is not equivalent
> +		 * to allloc_page(gfp). The former will prefer the local/closest node,
> +		 * whereas the latter will try to follow the memory policy of the current
> +		 * process.
> +		 */
> +		page = alloc_page(gfp);
> +	}
>  
>  	return page_zpdesc(page);
>  }
> @@ -461,10 +476,13 @@ static void zs_zpool_destroy(void *pool)
>  	zs_destroy_pool(pool);
>  }
>  
> +static unsigned long zs_malloc_node(struct zs_pool *pool, size_t size,
> +				gfp_t gfp, const int *nid);
> +
>  static int zs_zpool_malloc(void *pool, size_t size, gfp_t gfp,
> -			unsigned long *handle)
> +			unsigned long *handle, const int nid)
>  {
> -	*handle = zs_malloc(pool, size, gfp);
> +	*handle = zs_malloc_node(pool, size, gfp, &nid);
>  
>  	if (IS_ERR_VALUE(*handle))
>  		return PTR_ERR((void *)*handle);

>  }
>  
>  
> -/**
> - * zs_malloc - Allocate block of given size from pool.
> - * @pool: pool to allocate from
> - * @size: size of block to allocate
> - * @gfp: gfp flags when allocating object
> - *
> - * On success, handle to the allocated object is returned,
> - * otherwise an ERR_PTR().
> - * Allocation requests with size > ZS_MAX_ALLOC_SIZE will fail.
> - */
> -unsigned long zs_malloc(struct zs_pool *pool, size_t size, gfp_t gfp)
> +static unsigned long zs_malloc_node(struct zs_pool *pool, size_t size,
> +				gfp_t gfp, const int *nid)
>  {
>  	unsigned long handle;
>  	struct size_class *class;

> @@ -1397,6 +1406,21 @@ unsigned long zs_malloc(struct zs_pool *pool, size_t size, gfp_t gfp)
>  
>  	return handle;
>  }
> +
> +/**
> + * zs_malloc - Allocate block of given size from pool.
> + * @pool: pool to allocate from
> + * @size: size of block to allocate
> + * @gfp: gfp flags when allocating object
> + *
> + * On success, handle to the allocated object is returned,
> + * otherwise an ERR_PTR().
> + * Allocation requests with size > ZS_MAX_ALLOC_SIZE will fail.
> + */
> +unsigned long zs_malloc(struct zs_pool *pool, size_t size, gfp_t gfp)
> +{
> +	return zs_malloc_node(pool, size, gfp, NULL);
> +}
>  EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(zs_malloc);
>  
>  static void obj_free(int class_size, unsigned long obj)