Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm: page_alloc: speed up fallbacks in rmqueue_bulk()

[Shivank Garg]

On 4/7/2025 11:31 PM, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> The test robot identified c2f6ea38fc1b ("mm: page_alloc: don't steal
> single pages from biggest buddy") as the root cause of a 56.4%
> regression in vm-scalability::lru-file-mmap-read.
> 
> Carlos reports an earlier patch, c0cd6f557b90 ("mm: page_alloc: fix
> freelist movement during block conversion"), as the root cause for a
> regression in worst-case zone->lock+irqoff hold times.
> 
> Both of these patches modify the page allocator's fallback path to be
> less greedy in an effort to stave off fragmentation. The flip side of
> this is that fallbacks are also less productive each time around,
> which means the fallback search can run much more frequently.
> 
> Carlos' traces point to rmqueue_bulk() specifically, which tries to
> refill the percpu cache by allocating a large batch of pages in a
> loop. It highlights how once the native freelists are exhausted, the
> fallback code first scans orders top-down for whole blocks to claim,
> then falls back to a bottom-up search for the smallest buddy to steal.
> For the next batch page, it goes through the same thing again.
> 
> This can be made more efficient. Since rmqueue_bulk() holds the
> zone->lock over the entire batch, the freelists are not subject to
> outside changes; when the search for a block to claim has already
> failed, there is no point in trying again for the next page.
> 
> Modify __rmqueue() to remember the last successful fallback mode, and
> restart directly from there on the next rmqueue_bulk() iteration.
> 
> Oliver confirms that this improves beyond the regression that the test
> robot reported against c2f6ea38fc1b:
> 
> commit:
>   f3b92176f4 ("tools/selftests: add guard region test for /proc/$pid/pagemap")
>   c2f6ea38fc ("mm: page_alloc: don't steal single pages from biggest buddy")
>   acc4d5ff0b ("Merge tag 'net-6.15-rc0' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net")
>   2c847f27c3 ("mm: page_alloc: speed up fallbacks in rmqueue_bulk()")   <--- your patch
> 
> f3b92176f4f7100f c2f6ea38fc1b640aa7a2e155cc1 acc4d5ff0b61eb1715c498b6536 2c847f27c37da65a93d23c237c5
> ---------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- ---------------------------
>          %stddev     %change         %stddev     %change         %stddev     %change         %stddev
>              \          |                \          |                \          |                \
>   25525364 ±  3%     -56.4%   11135467           -57.8%   10779336           +31.6%   33581409        vm-scalability.throughput
> 
> Carlos confirms that worst-case times are almost fully recovered
> compared to before the earlier culprit patch:
> 
>   2dd482ba627d (before freelist hygiene):    1ms
>   c0cd6f557b90  (after freelist hygiene):   90ms
>  next-20250319    (steal smallest buddy):  280ms
>     this patch                          :    8ms
> 
> Reported-by: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@xxxxxxxxx>
> Reported-by: Carlos Song <carlos.song@xxxxxxx>
> Tested-by: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@xxxxxxxxx>
> Fixes: c0cd6f557b90 ("mm: page_alloc: fix freelist movement during block conversion")
> Fixes: c2f6ea38fc1b ("mm: page_alloc: don't steal single pages from biggest buddy")
> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/oe-lkp/202503271547.fc08b188-lkp@xxxxxxxxx
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	# 6.10+
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---

Tested on AMD Zen 3 EPYC (2-socket and 1 NUMA node, 64 CPUs on each socket)
vm-scalability/300s-lru-file-mmap-read.

		Vanilla		Patched		Change
Throughput	32267451	36112127 	+11.9% improvement
Stddev% 	2477.36		2969.18		+19.8%
Free Time	0.144072	0.148774	+3.2%
Median		227967		249851		+9.6%

Tested-by: Shivank Garg <shivankg@xxxxxxx>

Thanks,
Shivank