Re: [Regression] mm:slab/sheaves: severe performance regression in cross-CPU slab allocation

[Harry Yoo]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 02:51:26PM +0800, Hao Li wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 10:52:28AM +0800, Ming Lei wrote:
> > Reproducer
> > ==========
> > 
> [...]
> > 
> > the result is that the allocating cpu's per-cpu slab caches are
> > continuously drained without being replenished by local frees. the bio
> > layer's own per-cpu cache (bio_alloc_cache) suffers the same mismatch:
> > freed bios go to the completion cpu's cache via bio_put_percpu_cache(),
> > leaving the submitter cpus' caches empty and falling through to
> > mempool_alloc() -> kmem_cache_alloc() -> slub slow path.
> > 
> > in v6.19, slub handled this with a 3-tier allocation hierarchy:
> > 
> >   Tier 1: CPU slab freelist         lock-free (cmpxchg)
> >   Tier 2: CPU partial slab list     lock-free (per-CPU local_lock)
> >   Tier 3: Node partial list         kmem_cache_node->list_lock
> > 
> > The CPU partial slab list (Tier 2) was the critical buffer. It was
> > populated during __slab_free() -> put_cpu_partial() and provided a
> > lock-free pool of partial slabs per CPU. Even when the CPU slab was
> > exhausted, the CPU partial list could supply more slabs without
> > touching any shared lock.
> > 
> > The sheaves architecture replaces this with a 2-tier hierarchy:
> > 
> >   Tier 1: Per-CPU sheaf             lock-free (local_lock)
> >   Tier 2: Node partial list         kmem_cache_node->list_lock
> > 
> > The intermediate lock-free tier is gone. When the per-CPU sheaf is
> > empty and the spare sheaf is also empty, every refill must go through
> > the node partial list, requiring kmem_cache_node->list_lock. With 16
> > CPUs simultaneously allocating bios and all hitting empty sheaves, this
> > creates a thundering herd on the node list_lock.
> > 
> > When the local node's partial list is also depleted (objects freed on
> > remote nodes accumulate there instead), get_from_any_partial() kicks in
> > to search other NUMA nodes, compounding the contention with cross-NUMA
> > list_lock acquisition — explaining the 41% in get_from_any_partial ->
> > native_queued_spin_lock_slowpath seen in the profile.
> 
> The purpose of introducing sheaves was to fully replace the percpu partial slabs
> mechanism with sheaves. During this process, we first added the sheaves caching
> layer and only later removed the percpu partial slabs layer, so it's expected
> that performance could first improve and then return to the previous level.

There's one difference here; you used will-it-scale mmap2 test case that
involves maple tree node and vm_area_struct cache that already has
sheaves enabled in v6.19.

And Ming's benchmark stresses bio-<size> caches.

Since other caches don't have sheaves in v6.19, they're not supposed to
have performance gain by having additional sheaves layer on top of cpu
slab + percpu partial slab list.

> Would you mind also comparing against a baseline with "no sheaves at all" (e.g.
> commit `9d4e6ab865c4`) versus "only the sheaves layer exists" (i.e. commit
> `815c8e35511d`)? If those two results are close, then the ~64% performance
> regression we're currently discussing might be better interpreted as returning
> to the previous baseline (i.e. a reversion), rather than a true regression.
>
> The link below contains my previous test results. According to will-it-scale,
> the performance of "no sheaves at all" and "only the sheaves layer exists" is
> close:
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/pdmjsvpkl5nsntiwfwguplajq27ak3xpboq3ab77zrbu763pq7@la3hyiqigpir/

-- 
Cheers,
Harry / Hyeonggon