Re: [PATCH] pipe: Prefer mempolicy node for metadata allocations

[Andrea Righi]

Hi Jan,

On Tue, Nov 10, 2026 at 01:27:53PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 10-11-26 07:52:19, Andrea Righi wrote:
> > Generic slab allocations can reuse partial slabs from another NUMA node,
> > even when a pipe workload is bound to one node. Pipe metadata is shared
> > between senders and receivers and accessed throughout the pipe lifetime.
> > Reusing remote metadata can therefore make an IPC workload pay remote
> > access and coherence costs on every exchange.
> > 
> > The target use case is a workload that binds its workers and memory to
> > one NUMA node with numactl. The policy node is then a useful placement
> > hint for shared pipe metadata.
> > 
> > Allocate pipe_inode_info and its descriptor array on the node selected
> > by the caller's memory policy. Apply the same preference when replacing
> > slab-sized descriptor arrays during ring resizing. An explicit node lets
> > SLUB try local allocations before reusing remote partial slabs.
> > 
> > For descriptor arrays larger than KMALLOC_MAX_CACHE_SIZE, pass
> > NUMA_NO_NODE to keep the policy-aware page allocation path. An explicit
> > node would otherwise lose the MPOL_BIND nodemask on fallback. Select the
> > policy node only for slab-sized arrays, avoiding an extra advance of an
> > interleave policy for large allocations.
> > 
> > Moving a pipe's users to another node doesn't migrate its existing
> > metadata, so migration can still result in remote accesses regardless of
> > this change. Generic allocations may reuse remote partial slabs, making
> > initial placement dependent on allocator state. In contrast, preferring
> > the policy node leverages the workload's placement hint to improve
> > locality when users remain on the intended node.
> > 
> > Testing has been performed on a dual-socket NVIDIA Vera system, covering
> > hackbench, pipe transfers, pipe creation and resizing, pipe_bench, and
> > targeted stress tests.
> > 
> > The primary hackbench reproducer is:
> > 
> >   $ numactl --physcpubind=0-87 --membind=0 \
> >       hackbench -P -p -g 10 -f 20 -s 100 -l 100000
> > 
> > Results (over 10 measured runs per case):
> > 
> >               avg       stdev
> >    before     9.811s    0.130s
> >    after      5.770s    0.058s
> > 
> > Before this change, allocations could reuse remote pipe metadata. With
> > this change, both pipe objects and descriptor arrays are allocated on
> > the requested node, improving locality and reducing hackbench runtime by
> > approximately 41%.
> > 
> > Reported-by: Quan Liu <qualiu@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <arighi@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> To me this makes sense so feel free to add:
> 
> Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>
> 
> But IMHO it deserves a look from MM guys since this is more of an MM thing
> than a filesystem one... Added to CC.

Thanks for taking a look, and good point about getting MM feedback.

Vlastimil, Gregory, do you think this SLUB locality and mempolicy
aspects makes sense here? In particular, does preferring the policy node
for slab-sized pipe metadata, while retaining the policy-aware path for
larger arrays, look reasonable?

Thanks,
-Andrea

> 
> 								Honza
> 
> > ---
> >  fs/pipe.c | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++----
> >  1 file changed, 22 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/fs/pipe.c b/fs/pipe.c
> > index 4fa69192e6fba..2a8f9e9f70f84 100644
> > --- a/fs/pipe.c
> > +++ b/fs/pipe.c
> > @@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
> >  #include <linux/syscalls.h>
> >  #include <linux/fcntl.h>
> >  #include <linux/memcontrol.h>
> > +#include <linux/mempolicy.h>
> >  #include <linux/watch_queue.h>
> >  #include <linux/sysctl.h>
> >  #include <linux/sort.h>
> > @@ -874,6 +875,16 @@ bool pipe_is_unprivileged_user(void)
> >  	return !capable(CAP_SYS_RESOURCE) && !capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN);
> >  }
> >  
> > +/* Prefer the policy node over remote partial slabs, retaining fallback. */
> > +static int pipe_slab_node(void)
> > +{
> > +#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> > +	return mempolicy_slab_node();
> > +#else
> > +	return NUMA_NO_NODE;
> > +#endif
> > +}
> > +
> >  struct pipe_inode_info *alloc_pipe_info(void)
> >  {
> >  	struct pipe_inode_info *pipe;
> > @@ -881,8 +892,9 @@ struct pipe_inode_info *alloc_pipe_info(void)
> >  	struct user_struct *user = get_current_user();
> >  	unsigned long user_bufs;
> >  	unsigned int max_size = READ_ONCE(pipe_max_size);
> > +	int node = pipe_slab_node();
> >  
> > -	pipe = kzalloc_obj(struct pipe_inode_info, GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT);
> > +	pipe = kzalloc_node(sizeof(*pipe), GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT, node);
> >  	if (pipe == NULL)
> >  		goto out_free_uid;
> >  
> > @@ -899,8 +911,8 @@ struct pipe_inode_info *alloc_pipe_info(void)
> >  	if (too_many_pipe_buffers_hard(user_bufs) && pipe_is_unprivileged_user())
> >  		goto out_revert_acct;
> >  
> > -	pipe->bufs = kzalloc_objs(struct pipe_buffer, pipe_bufs,
> > -				  GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT);
> > +	pipe->bufs = kcalloc_node(pipe_bufs, sizeof(*pipe->bufs),
> > +				  GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT, node);
> >  
> >  	if (pipe->bufs) {
> >  		init_waitqueue_head(&pipe->rd_wait);
> > @@ -1375,12 +1387,18 @@ int pipe_resize_ring(struct pipe_inode_info *pipe, unsigned int nr_slots)
> >  {
> >  	struct pipe_buffer *bufs;
> >  	unsigned int head, tail, mask, n;
> > +	int node = NUMA_NO_NODE;
> >  
> >  	/* nr_slots larger than limits of pipe->{head,tail} */
> >  	if (unlikely(nr_slots > (pipe_index_t)-1u))
> >  		return -EINVAL;
> >  
> > -	bufs = kzalloc_objs(*bufs, nr_slots, GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT | __GFP_NOWARN);
> > +	/* Keep the policy nodemask for allocations that bypass slab caches. */
> > +	if (nr_slots <= KMALLOC_MAX_CACHE_SIZE / sizeof(*bufs))
> > +		node = pipe_slab_node();
> > +
> > +	bufs = kcalloc_node(nr_slots, sizeof(*bufs),
> > +			    GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT | __GFP_NOWARN, node);
> >  	if (unlikely(!bufs))
> >  		return -ENOMEM;
> >  
> > -- 
> > 2.56.0
> > 
> -- 
> Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
> SUSE Labs, CR
>