Re: [PATCH v3] mm/page_alloc: avoid direct compaction for costly __GFP_NORETRY allocations

[Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)]

On 7/14/26 14:02, Salvatore Dipietro wrote:
> 
> Hi Johannes, Matthew,
> 
> Thank you both for the alternative proposals. I've tested both
> approaches on the same test environment used for v3.
> 
> Results (4 runs each):
> 
>   Config                   Avg TPS      % vs Baseline
>   --------------------------------------------------------
>   baseline (no patch)       70,735       -
>   Johannes' approach       156,908      +121.8%
>   Matthew's approach        70,145       -0.8% (within noise)
> 
> 
> Johannes' approach (clearing __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM early in the
> slowpath for costly __GFP_NORETRY) delivers the same ~2.2x speedup
> as v3, as expected - it prevents the entire direct reclaim and
> compaction machinery from running for these opportunistic allocations.

AFAICS both your v3 and the implemented Johannes' suggestion effectively
make all the compact_first logic dead code - at least for the intended THP
use case based on costly_order. It will only continue to do something for
the non-movable order>0  case. So that's a significant change which will not
show up in your results, but might affect other workloads (I'd expect mainly
by having fewer THPs).

> Matthew's filemap.c approach does not help in this workload.  The
> reason is that the first allocation attempt at max order still carries
> __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM and enters the slowpath with direct compaction
> enabled.  The __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM clearing only takes effect for 
> subsequent lower-order attempts in the fallback loop, but the costly 
> compaction has already executed on the first try.
> 
> Let me know if you have any other variant you want me to test, 
> or if I should prepare a v4 based on Johannes' suggestion.
> 
> This is what I tested for Johannes' approach:
> 
> 
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index a63733dac659..6e960c969e67 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -4733,10 +4733,10 @@ static inline struct page *
>  __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
>  					struct alloc_context *ac)
>  {
> -	bool can_direct_reclaim = gfp_mask & __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM;
> -	bool can_compact = can_direct_reclaim && gfp_compaction_allowed(gfp_mask);
> -	bool nofail = gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL;
>  	const bool costly_order = order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER;
> +	bool can_direct_reclaim;
> +	bool can_compact;
> +	bool nofail;
>  	struct page *page = NULL;
>  	unsigned int alloc_flags;
>  	unsigned long did_some_progress;
> @@ -4751,6 +4751,20 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
>  	bool can_retry_reserves = true;
>  	unsigned long alloc_start_time = jiffies;
>  
> +	/*
> +	 * Costly __GFP_NORETRY allocations are opportunistic: the caller
> +	 * can fall back to smaller orders.  Don't stall on direct reclaim
> +	 * or compaction; clearing __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM makes the entire
> +	 * slowpath treat this as a non-blocking request.  kswapd will wake
> +	 * kcompactd as needed for background defragmentation.
> +	 */
> +	if (costly_order && (gfp_mask & __GFP_NORETRY))
> +		gfp_mask &= ~__GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM;
> +
> +	can_direct_reclaim = gfp_mask & __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM;
> +	can_compact = can_direct_reclaim && gfp_compaction_allowed(gfp_mask);
> +	nofail = gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL;
> +
>  	if (unlikely(nofail)) {
>  		/*
>  		 * Also we don't support __GFP_NOFAIL without __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM,
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Salvatore
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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