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[0/2] mm/page_alloc: Remote per-cpu lists drain support

Message ID 20220208100750.1189808-1-nsaenzju@redhat.com
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Series mm/page_alloc: Remote per-cpu lists drain support | expand

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Nicolas Saenz Julienne Feb. 8, 2022, 10:07 a.m. UTC
This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
virtualised systems.

The new algorithm will atomically switch the pointer to the per-cpu page lists
and use RCU to make sure it's not being concurrently used before draining the
lists. And its main benefit of is that it fixes the issue for good, avoiding
the need for configuration based heuristics or having to modify applications
(i.e. using the isolation prctrl being worked by Marcello Tosatti ATM).

All this with minimal performance implications: a page allocation
microbenchmark was run on multiple systems and architectures generally showing
no performance differences, only the more extreme cases showed a 1-3%
degradation. See data below. Needless to say that I'd appreciate if someone
could validate my values independently.

The approach has been stress-tested: I forced 100 drains/s while running
mmtests' pft in a loop for a full day on multiple machines and archs (arm64,
x86_64, ppc64le).

Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
 - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
   scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
   NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
   for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
 - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
   performance degradation was too big.

Previous RFC: https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/10/8/793

Thanks!

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/9/21/599
[2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/11/3/644

---

Changes since RFC:
 - Get rid of aesthetic changes that affected performance
 - Add more documentation
 - Add better commit messages
 - Pass sparse tests
 - Verify this_cpu_*() usage
 - Performance measurements

Nicolas Saenz Julienne (2):
  mm/page_alloc: Access lists in 'struct per_cpu_pages' indirectly
  mm/page_alloc: Add remote draining support to per-cpu lists

 include/linux/mmzone.h |  28 +++++-
 mm/page_alloc.c        | 212 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
 mm/vmstat.c            |   6 +-
 3 files changed, 162 insertions(+), 84 deletions(-)


-------------------------Performance results-----------------------------

I'm focusing on mmtests' Page Fault Test (pft), as it's page allocator
intensive.

- AMD Daytona Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7742, Zen 2, 64-Core,
  4 NUMA nodes, x86_64

pft timings:
                                     vanilla                    rcu
Amean     system-1          58.52 (   0.00%)       58.92 *  -0.68%*
Amean     system-4          61.00 (   0.00%)       61.41 *  -0.67%*
Amean     system-7          61.55 (   0.00%)       61.74 *  -0.30%*
Amean     system-12         64.91 (   0.00%)       64.94 *  -0.05%*
Amean     system-21         98.80 (   0.00%)       99.92 *  -1.13%*
Amean     system-30        147.68 (   0.00%)      145.83 *   1.25%*
Amean     system-48        237.04 (   0.00%)      241.29 *  -1.79%*
Amean     system-79        286.61 (   0.00%)      283.72 *   1.01%*
Amean     system-110       303.40 (   0.00%)      299.91 *   1.15%*
Amean     system-128       345.07 (   0.00%)      342.10 *   0.86%*
Amean     elapsed-1         61.21 (   0.00%)       61.65 *  -0.71%*
Amean     elapsed-4         15.94 (   0.00%)       16.05 *  -0.69%*
Amean     elapsed-7          9.24 (   0.00%)        9.28 *  -0.47%*
Amean     elapsed-12         5.70 (   0.00%)        5.70 *  -0.07%*
Amean     elapsed-21         5.11 (   0.00%)        5.06 *   1.13%*
Amean     elapsed-30         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.14 *   2.73%*
Amean     elapsed-48         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.24 *   0.74%*
Amean     elapsed-79         4.41 (   0.00%)        4.31 *   2.17%*
Amean     elapsed-110        3.45 (   0.00%)        3.44 *   0.40%*
Amean     elapsed-128        2.75 (   0.00%)        2.75 *  -0.28%*

- AMD Speedway Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7601, Zen 1, 64-core, 8
  NUMA nodes, x86_64. Lots of variance between tests on this platform. It'll
  easily swing -+5% on each result. 

pft timings:
                                     vanilla                    rcu
Amean     system-1          69.20 (   0.00%)       66.21 *   4.32%*
Amean     system-4          70.79 (   0.00%)       69.01 *   2.52%*
Amean     system-7          71.34 (   0.00%)       69.16 *   3.05%*
Amean     system-12         74.00 (   0.00%)       72.74 *   1.70%*
Amean     system-21         86.01 (   0.00%)       85.70 *   0.36%*
Amean     system-30         89.21 (   0.00%)       89.93 *  -0.80%*
Amean     system-48         92.39 (   0.00%)       92.43 *  -0.04%*
Amean     system-79        120.19 (   0.00%)      121.30 *  -0.92%*
Amean     system-110       172.79 (   0.00%)      179.37 *  -3.81%*
Amean     system-128       201.70 (   0.00%)      212.57 *  -5.39%*
Amean     elapsed-1         72.23 (   0.00%)       69.29 *   4.08%*
Amean     elapsed-4         18.69 (   0.00%)       18.28 *   2.20%*
Amean     elapsed-7         10.80 (   0.00%)       10.54 *   2.41%*
Amean     elapsed-12         6.62 (   0.00%)        6.53 *   1.30%*
Amean     elapsed-21         4.68 (   0.00%)        4.69 *  -0.14%*
Amean     elapsed-30         3.44 (   0.00%)        3.50 *  -1.66%*
Amean     elapsed-48         2.40 (   0.00%)        2.42 *  -1.00%*
Amean     elapsed-79         2.05 (   0.00%)        2.09 *  -1.90%*
Amean     elapsed-110        1.83 (   0.00%)        1.91 *  -4.60%*
Amean     elapsed-128        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -5.99%*

- IBM 9006-22C system, 2 sockets, POWER9, 64-Core, 1 NUMA node per cpu,
  pppc64le.

pft timings:
                                     vanilla                    rcu
Amean     system-1           1.82 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -1.43%*
Amean     system-4           2.18 (   0.00%)        2.22 *  -2.02%*
Amean     system-7           3.27 (   0.00%)        3.28 *  -0.15%*
Amean     system-12          5.22 (   0.00%)        5.20 *   0.26%*
Amean     system-21         10.10 (   0.00%)       10.20 *  -1.00%*
Amean     system-30         15.00 (   0.00%)       14.52 *   3.20%*
Amean     system-48         26.41 (   0.00%)       25.96 *   1.71%*
Amean     system-79         29.35 (   0.00%)       29.70 *  -1.21%*
Amean     system-110        24.01 (   0.00%)       23.40 *   2.54%*
Amean     system-128        24.57 (   0.00%)       25.32 *  -3.06%*
Amean     elapsed-1          1.85 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -1.28%*
Amean     elapsed-4          0.56 (   0.00%)        0.57 *  -1.72%*
Amean     elapsed-7          0.51 (   0.00%)        0.50 *   0.07%*
Amean     elapsed-12         0.51 (   0.00%)        0.51 *   0.06%*
Amean     elapsed-21         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.54 *   0.06%*
Amean     elapsed-30         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.53 *   2.22%*
Amean     elapsed-48         0.58 (   0.00%)        0.57 *   1.73%*
Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.48 *   0.89%*
Amean     elapsed-110        0.37 (   0.00%)        0.37 *  -1.08%*
Amean     elapsed-128        0.33 (   0.00%)        0.33 *   0.00%*

- Ampere MtSnow, 1 socket, Neoverse-N1, 80-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.

pft timings:
                                    vanilla		       rcu
Amean     system-1         11.92 (   0.00%)       11.99 *  -0.61%*
Amean     system-4         13.13 (   0.00%)       13.09 *   0.31%*
Amean     system-7         13.91 (   0.00%)       13.94 *  -0.20%*
Amean     system-12        15.77 (   0.00%)       15.69 *   0.48%*
Amean     system-21        21.32 (   0.00%)       21.42 *  -0.46%*
Amean     system-30        28.58 (   0.00%)       29.12 *  -1.90%*
Amean     system-48        47.41 (   0.00%)       46.91 *   1.04%*
Amean     system-79        76.76 (   0.00%)       77.16 *  -0.52%*
Amean     system-80        77.98 (   0.00%)       78.23 *  -0.32%*
Amean     elapsed-1        12.46 (   0.00%)       12.53 *  -0.58%*
Amean     elapsed-4         3.47 (   0.00%)        3.46 *   0.34%*
Amean     elapsed-7         2.18 (   0.00%)        2.21 *  -1.58%*
Amean     elapsed-12        1.41 (   0.00%)        1.42 *  -0.80%*
Amean     elapsed-21        1.09 (   0.00%)        1.12 *  -2.60%*
Amean     elapsed-30        0.98 (   0.00%)        1.01 *  -3.08%*
Amean     elapsed-48        1.08 (   0.00%)        1.10 *  -1.78%*
Amean     elapsed-79        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   2.71%*
Amean     elapsed-80        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   3.23%*

- Dell R430, 2 sockets, Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3, Sandy Bridge, 16-Cores, 2 NUMA
  nodes, x86_64.

pft timings:
                                    vanilla		       rcu
Amean     system-1         11.10 (   0.00%)       11.07 *   0.24%*
Amean     system-3         11.14 (   0.00%)       11.10 *   0.34%*
Amean     system-5         11.18 (   0.00%)       11.13 *   0.47%*
Amean     system-7         11.21 (   0.00%)       11.17 *   0.38%*
Amean     system-12        11.28 (   0.00%)       11.28 (  -0.03%)
Amean     system-18        13.24 (   0.00%)       13.25 *  -0.11%*
Amean     system-24        17.12 (   0.00%)       17.14 (  -0.13%)
Amean     system-30        21.10 (   0.00%)       21.23 *  -0.60%*
Amean     system-32        22.31 (   0.00%)       22.47 *  -0.71%*
Amean     elapsed-1        11.76 (   0.00%)       11.73 *   0.29%*
Amean     elapsed-3         3.93 (   0.00%)        3.93 *   0.17%*
Amean     elapsed-5         2.39 (   0.00%)        2.37 *   0.74%*
Amean     elapsed-7         1.72 (   0.00%)        1.71 *   0.81%*
Amean     elapsed-12        1.02 (   0.00%)        1.03 (  -0.42%)
Amean     elapsed-18        1.13 (   0.00%)        1.14 (  -0.18%)
Amean     elapsed-24        0.87 (   0.00%)        0.88 *  -0.65%*
Amean     elapsed-30        0.77 (   0.00%)        0.78 *  -0.86%*
Amean     elapsed-32        0.74 (   0.00%)        0.74 (   0.00%)

- HPE Apollo 70, 2 sockets, Cavium ThunderX2, 128-Cores, 2 NUMA nodes, arm64.
  NOTE: The test here only goes up to 128 for some reason, although there are
  256 CPUs. Maybe a mmtests issue? I didn't investigate.

pft timings:
                                     vanilla		        rcu
Amean     system-1           4.42 (   0.00%)        4.36 *   1.29%*
Amean     system-4           4.56 (   0.00%)        4.51 *   1.05%*
Amean     system-7           4.63 (   0.00%)        4.65 *  -0.42%*
Amean     system-12          5.96 (   0.00%)        6.02 *  -1.00%*
Amean     system-21         10.97 (   0.00%)       11.01 *  -0.32%*
Amean     system-30         16.01 (   0.00%)       16.04 *  -0.19%*
Amean     system-48         26.81 (   0.00%)       26.78 *   0.09%*
Amean     system-79         30.80 (   0.00%)       30.85 *  -0.16%*
Amean     system-110        31.87 (   0.00%)       31.93 *  -0.19%*
Amean     system-128        36.27 (   0.00%)       36.31 *  -0.10%*
Amean     elapsed-1          4.88 (   0.00%)        4.85 *   0.60%*
Amean     elapsed-4          1.27 (   0.00%)        1.26 *   1.00%*
Amean     elapsed-7          0.73 (   0.00%)        0.74 *  -0.46%*
Amean     elapsed-12         0.55 (   0.00%)        0.55 *   1.09%*
Amean     elapsed-21         0.59 (   0.00%)        0.60 *  -0.96%*
Amean     elapsed-30         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.28%*
Amean     elapsed-48         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.44%*
Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.49 *  -0.07%*
Amean     elapsed-110        0.36 (   0.00%)        0.36 *   0.28%*
Amean     elapsed-128        0.31 (   0.00%)        0.31 *  -0.43%*

- Raspberry Pi 4, 1 socket, bcm2711, Cortex-A72, 4-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.

pft timings:
                                   vanilla		      rcu
Amean     system-1         0.67 (   0.00%)        0.67 *  -1.25%*
Amean     system-3         1.30 (   0.00%)        1.29 *   0.62%*
Amean     system-4         1.61 (   0.00%)        1.59 *   0.95%*
Amean     elapsed-1        0.71 (   0.00%)        0.72 *  -1.17%*
Amean     elapsed-3        0.45 (   0.00%)        0.45 *   0.88%*
Amean     elapsed-4        0.42 (   0.00%)        0.42 *   1.19%*

Comments

Nicolas Saenz Julienne Feb. 8, 2022, 10:07 a.m. UTC | #1
The page allocator's per-cpu page lists (pcplists) are currently
protected using local_locks. While performance savvy, this doesn't allow
for remote access to these structures. CPUs requiring system-wide
changes to the per-cpu lists get around this by scheduling
workers on each CPU. That said, some setups like NOHZ_FULL CPUs,
aren't well suited to this since they can't handle interruptions
of any sort.

To mitigate this, replace the current draining mechanism with one that
allows remotely draining the lists:

 - Each CPU now has two pcplists pointers: one that points to a pcplists
   instance that is in-use, 'pcp->lp', another that points to an idle
   and empty instance, 'pcp->drain'. CPUs access their local pcplists
   through 'pcp->lp' and the pointer is dereferenced atomically.

 - When a CPU decides it needs to empty some remote pcplists, it'll
   atomically exchange the remote CPU's 'pcp->lp' and 'pcp->drain'
   pointers. A remote CPU racing with this will either have:

     - An old 'pcp->lp' reference, it'll soon be emptied by the drain
       process, we just have to wait for it to finish using it.

     - The new 'pcp->lp' reference, that is, an empty pcplists instance.
       rcu_replace_pointer()'s release semantics ensures any prior
       changes will be visible by the remote CPU, for example: changes
       to 'pcp->high' and 'pcp->batch' when disabling the pcplists.

 - The CPU that started the drain can now wait for an RCU grace period
   to make sure the remote CPU is done using the old pcplists.
   synchronize_rcu() counts as a full memory barrier, so any changes the
   local CPU makes to the soon to be drained pcplists will be visible to
   the draining CPU once it returns.

 - Then the CPU can safely free the old pcplists. Nobody else holds a
   reference to it. Note that concurrent access to the remote pcplists
   drain is protected by the 'pcpu_drain_mutex'.
Marcelo Tosatti Feb. 8, 2022, 3:47 p.m. UTC | #2
On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 11:07:50AM +0100, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> The page allocator's per-cpu page lists (pcplists) are currently
> protected using local_locks. While performance savvy, this doesn't allow
> for remote access to these structures. CPUs requiring system-wide
> changes to the per-cpu lists get around this by scheduling
> workers on each CPU. That said, some setups like NOHZ_FULL CPUs,
> aren't well suited to this since they can't handle interruptions
> of any sort.
> 
> To mitigate this, replace the current draining mechanism with one that
> allows remotely draining the lists:
> 
>  - Each CPU now has two pcplists pointers: one that points to a pcplists
>    instance that is in-use, 'pcp->lp', another that points to an idle
>    and empty instance, 'pcp->drain'. CPUs access their local pcplists
>    through 'pcp->lp' and the pointer is dereferenced atomically.
> 
>  - When a CPU decides it needs to empty some remote pcplists, it'll
>    atomically exchange the remote CPU's 'pcp->lp' and 'pcp->drain'
>    pointers. A remote CPU racing with this will either have:
> 
>      - An old 'pcp->lp' reference, it'll soon be emptied by the drain
>        process, we just have to wait for it to finish using it.
> 
>      - The new 'pcp->lp' reference, that is, an empty pcplists instance.
>        rcu_replace_pointer()'s release semantics ensures any prior
>        changes will be visible by the remote CPU, for example: changes
>        to 'pcp->high' and 'pcp->batch' when disabling the pcplists.
> 
>  - The CPU that started the drain can now wait for an RCU grace period
>    to make sure the remote CPU is done using the old pcplists.
>    synchronize_rcu() counts as a full memory barrier, so any changes the
>    local CPU makes to the soon to be drained pcplists will be visible to
>    the draining CPU once it returns.
> 
>  - Then the CPU can safely free the old pcplists. Nobody else holds a
>    reference to it. Note that concurrent access to the remote pcplists
>    drain is protected by the 'pcpu_drain_mutex'.
> 
> >From an RCU perspective, we're only protecting access to the pcplists
> pointer, the drain operation is the writer and the local_lock critical
> sections are the readers. RCU guarantees atomicity both while
> dereferencing the pcplists pointer and replacing it. It also checks for
> RCU critical section/locking correctness, as all readers have to hold
> their per-cpu pagesets local_lock, which also counts as a critical
> section from RCU's perspective.
> 
> >From a performance perspective, on production configurations, the patch
> adds an extra dereference to all hot paths (under such circumstances
> rcu_dereference() will simplify to READ_ONCE()). Extensive measurements
> have been performed on different architectures to ascertain the
> performance impact is minimal. Most platforms don't see any difference
> and the worst-case scenario shows a 1-3% degradation on a page
> allocation micro-benchmark. See cover letter for in-depth results.
> 
> Accesses to the pcplists like the ones in mm/vmstat.c don't require RCU
> supervision since they can handle outdated data, but they do use
> rcu_access_pointer() to avoid compiler weirdness make sparse happy.
> 
> Note that special care has been taken to verify there are no races with
> the memory hotplug code paths. Notably with calls to zone_pcp_reset().
> As Mel Gorman explains in a previous patch[1]: "The existing hotplug
> paths guarantees the pcplists cannot be used after zone_pcp_enable()
> [the one in offline_pages()]. That should be the case already because
> all the pages have been freed and there is no page to put on the PCP
> lists."
> 
> All in all, this technique allows for remote draining on all setups with
> an acceptable performance impact. It benefits all sorts of use cases:
> low-latency, real-time, HPC, idle systems, KVM guests.
> 
> [1] 8ca559132a2d ("mm/memory_hotplug: remove broken locking of zone PCP
>     structures during hot remove")
> 
> Signed-off-by: Nicolas Saenz Julienne <nsaenzju@redhat.com>
> ---
> 
> Changes since RFC:
>  - Avoid unnecessary spin_lock_irqsave/restore() in free_pcppages_bulk()
>  - Add more detail to commit and code comments.
>  - Use synchronize_rcu() instead of synchronize_rcu_expedited(), the RCU
>    documentation says to avoid it unless really justified. I don't think
>    it's justified here, if we can schedule and join works, waiting for
>    an RCU grace period is OK.

https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/netdev/patch/1306228052.3026.16.camel@edumazet-laptop/

Adding 100ms to direct reclaim path might be problematic. It will also
slowdown kcompactd (note it'll call drain_all_pages for each zone).

>  - Avoid sparse warnings by using rcu_access_pointer() and
>    rcu_dereference_protected().
> 
>  include/linux/mmzone.h |  22 +++++-
>  mm/page_alloc.c        | 155 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>  mm/vmstat.c            |   6 +-
>  3 files changed, 120 insertions(+), 63 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> index b4cb85d9c6e8..b0b593fd8e48 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> @@ -388,13 +388,31 @@ struct per_cpu_pages {
>  	short expire;		/* When 0, remote pagesets are drained */
>  #endif
>  
> -	struct pcplists *lp;
> +	/*
> +	 * As a rule of thumb, any access to struct per_cpu_pages's 'lp' has
> +	 * happen with the pagesets local_lock held and using
> +	 * rcu_dereference_check(). If there is a need to modify both
> +	 * 'lp->count' and 'lp->lists' in the same critical section 'pcp->lp'
> +	 * can only be derefrenced once. See for example:

Typo.
Xiongfeng Wang Feb. 9, 2022, 8:55 a.m. UTC | #3
Hi Nicolas,

When I applied the patchset on the following commit and tested on QEMU, I came
accross the following CallTrace.
  commit dd81e1c7d5fb126e5fbc5c9e334d7b3ec29a16a0

I wrote a userspace application to consume the memory. When the memory is used
out, the OOM killer is triggered and the following Calltrace is printed. I am
not sure if it is related to this patchset. But when I reverted this patchset,
the 'NULL pointer' Calltrace didn't show.

root@syzkaller:~# [  148.041840][  T476] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer
dereference at virtual address 0000000000000058
[  148.042838][  T476] Mem abort info:
[  148.043188][  T476]   ESR = 0x96000004
[  148.043540][  T476]   EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
[  148.044102][  T476]   SET = 0, FnV = 0
[  148.044451][  T476]   EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[  148.044812][  T476]   FSC = 0x04: level 0 translation fault
[  148.045333][  T476] Data abort info:
[  148.045666][  T476]   ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000004
[  148.046103][  T476]   CM = 0, WnR = 0
[  148.046444][  T476] user pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp=00000000abcec000
[  148.047187][  T476] [0000000000000058] pgd=0000000000000000, p4d=0000000000000000
[  148.047915][  T476] Internal error: Oops: 96000004 [#1] SMP
[  148.048450][  T476] Dumping ftrace buffer:
[  148.048843][  T476]    (ftrace buffer empty)
[  148.049473][  T476] Modules linked in:
[  148.049834][  T476] CPU: 1 PID: 476 Comm: test Not tainted 5.17.0-rc1+ #19
[  148.050485][  T476] Hardware name: QEMU KVM Virtual Machine, BIOS 0.0.0
02/06/2015
[  148.051242][  T476] pstate: 80400005 (Nzcv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS
BTYPE=--)
[  148.052019][  T476] pc : __drain_all_pages+0x1c4/0x318
[  148.052548][  T476] lr : __drain_all_pages+0x1a0/0x318
[  148.053070][  T476] sp : ffff80000ce9ba20
[  148.053477][  T476] x29: ffff80000ce9ba20 x28: 0000000000000000 x27:
0000000000000000
[  148.054268][  T476] x26: 0000000000000000 x25: ffff800009799000 x24:
0000000000000000
[  148.055067][  T476] x23: ffff80000979f460 x22: ffff800009bac000 x21:
ffff800009ed7110
[  148.055997][  T476] x20: ffff80000979a000 x19: 0000000000000000 x18:
0000000000000000
[  148.056784][  T476] x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000000000000000 x15:
0000000000000000
[  148.058493][  T476] x14: 0000000000000000 x13: 0000000000000000 x12:
ffff80000ce9b558
[  148.059649][  T476] x11: 0000000000000000 x10: ffff000bfffe6240 x9 :
0000000000000002
[  148.060775][  T476] x8 : 0000000000000000 x7 : ffffffffffffffff x6 :
0000000000000000
[  148.061609][  T476] x5 : 0000000000000000 x4 : ffff80000979bb70 x3 :
ffff800bf6a18000
[  148.062435][  T476] x2 : 0000000000000080 x1 : 00000000000c0000 x0 :
ffff000bfffe6240
[  148.063267][  T476] Call trace:
[  148.063602][  T476]  __drain_all_pages+0x1c4/0x318
[  148.064110][  T476]  __alloc_pages_slowpath.constprop.126+0x328/0xac8
[  148.064790][  T476]  __alloc_pages+0x270/0x330
[  148.065260][  T476]  alloc_pages+0xb0/0x160
[  148.065703][  T476]  __pte_alloc+0x44/0x180
[  148.066147][  T476]  __handle_mm_fault+0x59c/0xb30
[  148.066656][  T476]  handle_mm_fault+0xc4/0x210
[  148.067139][  T476]  do_page_fault+0x1cc/0x480
[  148.067607][  T476]  do_translation_fault+0x80/0x98
[  148.068265][  T476]  do_mem_abort+0x50/0xa0
[  148.068724][  T476]  el0_da+0x40/0x118
[  148.069132][  T476]  el0t_64_sync_handler+0x60/0xb0
[  148.069659][  T476]  el0t_64_sync+0x16c/0x170
[  148.070127][  T476] Code: b4fff7e0 f9404401 b4ffffa1 f87c7ae3 (f9402f01)
[  148.070874][  T476] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
[  149.059678][  T229] systemd-journal invoked oom-killer:
gfp_mask=0x1140cca(GFP_HIGHUSER_MOVABLE|__GFP_COMP), order=0, oom_score_adj=0
[  149.064280][  T229] CPU: 0 PID: 229 Comm: systemd-journal Tainted: G      D
        5.17.0-rc1+ #19
[  149.069110][  T229] Hardware name: QEMU KVM Virtual Machine, BIOS 0.0.0
02/06/2015
[  149.073070][  T229] Call trace:
[  149.074392][  T229]  dump_backtrace+0x114/0x120
[  149.077045][  T229]  show_stack+0x2c/0x78
[  149.079680][  T229]  dump_stack_lvl+0x64/0x7c
[  149.081741][  T229]  dump_stack+0x14/0x2c
[  149.083760][  T229]  dump_header+0x48/0x200
[  149.085772][  T229]  oom_kill_process+0x230/0x2e0
[  149.087877][  T229]  out_of_memory+0xf0/0x5a8
[  149.090776][  T229]  __alloc_pages_slowpath.constprop.126+0x830/0xac8
[  149.103397][  T229]  __alloc_pages+0x270/0x330
[  149.112662][  T229]  alloc_pages+0xb0/0x160
[  149.113088][  T229]  folio_alloc+0x28/0x50
[  149.113504][  T229]  filemap_alloc_folio+0x98/0xc8
[  149.113990][  T229]  __filemap_get_folio+0x194/0x2f0
[  149.114492][  T229]  filemap_fault+0x434/0x708
[  149.115799][  T229]  __do_fault+0x3c/0x118
[  149.117842][  T229]  do_fault+0x160/0x428
[  149.119893][  T229]  __handle_mm_fault+0x498/0xb30
[  149.123249][  T229]  handle_mm_fault+0xc4/0x210
[  149.125558][  T229]  do_page_fault+0x1cc/0x480
[  149.128347][  T229]  do_translation_fault+0x80/0x98
[  149.130444][  T229]  do_mem_abort+0x50/0xa0
[  149.132513][  T229]  el0_da+0x40/0x118
[  149.135152][  T229]  el0t_64_sync_handler+0x60/0xb0
[  149.137802][  T229]  el0t_64_sync+0x16c/0x170
[  149.140088][  T229] Mem-Info:
[  149.141197][  T229] active_anon:108 inactive_anon:12226341 isolated_anon:0
[  149.141197][  T229]  active_file:68 inactive_file:6 isolated_file:0
[  149.141197][  T229]  unevictable:0 dirty:0 writeback:0
[  149.141197][  T229]  slab_reclaimable:5964 slab_unreclaimable:14242
[  149.141197][  T229]  mapped:41 shmem:995 pagetables:24564 bounce:0
[  149.141197][  T229]  kernel_misc_reclaimable:0
[  149.141197][  T229]  free:52077 free_pcp:1845 free_cma:13312

Thanks,
Xiongfeng

On 2022/2/8 18:07, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> virtualised systems.
> 
> The new algorithm will atomically switch the pointer to the per-cpu page lists
> and use RCU to make sure it's not being concurrently used before draining the
> lists. And its main benefit of is that it fixes the issue for good, avoiding
> the need for configuration based heuristics or having to modify applications
> (i.e. using the isolation prctrl being worked by Marcello Tosatti ATM).
> 
> All this with minimal performance implications: a page allocation
> microbenchmark was run on multiple systems and architectures generally showing
> no performance differences, only the more extreme cases showed a 1-3%
> degradation. See data below. Needless to say that I'd appreciate if someone
> could validate my values independently.
> 
> The approach has been stress-tested: I forced 100 drains/s while running
> mmtests' pft in a loop for a full day on multiple machines and archs (arm64,
> x86_64, ppc64le).
> 
> Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
>  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
>    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
>    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
>    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
>  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
>    performance degradation was too big.
> 
> Previous RFC: https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/10/8/793
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/9/21/599
> [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/11/3/644
> 
> ---
> 
> Changes since RFC:
>  - Get rid of aesthetic changes that affected performance
>  - Add more documentation
>  - Add better commit messages
>  - Pass sparse tests
>  - Verify this_cpu_*() usage
>  - Performance measurements
> 
> Nicolas Saenz Julienne (2):
>   mm/page_alloc: Access lists in 'struct per_cpu_pages' indirectly
>   mm/page_alloc: Add remote draining support to per-cpu lists
> 
>  include/linux/mmzone.h |  28 +++++-
>  mm/page_alloc.c        | 212 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>  mm/vmstat.c            |   6 +-
>  3 files changed, 162 insertions(+), 84 deletions(-)
> 
> 
> -------------------------Performance results-----------------------------
> 
> I'm focusing on mmtests' Page Fault Test (pft), as it's page allocator
> intensive.
> 
> - AMD Daytona Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7742, Zen 2, 64-Core,
>   4 NUMA nodes, x86_64
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1          58.52 (   0.00%)       58.92 *  -0.68%*
> Amean     system-4          61.00 (   0.00%)       61.41 *  -0.67%*
> Amean     system-7          61.55 (   0.00%)       61.74 *  -0.30%*
> Amean     system-12         64.91 (   0.00%)       64.94 *  -0.05%*
> Amean     system-21         98.80 (   0.00%)       99.92 *  -1.13%*
> Amean     system-30        147.68 (   0.00%)      145.83 *   1.25%*
> Amean     system-48        237.04 (   0.00%)      241.29 *  -1.79%*
> Amean     system-79        286.61 (   0.00%)      283.72 *   1.01%*
> Amean     system-110       303.40 (   0.00%)      299.91 *   1.15%*
> Amean     system-128       345.07 (   0.00%)      342.10 *   0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-1         61.21 (   0.00%)       61.65 *  -0.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         15.94 (   0.00%)       16.05 *  -0.69%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          9.24 (   0.00%)        9.28 *  -0.47%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         5.70 (   0.00%)        5.70 *  -0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         5.11 (   0.00%)        5.06 *   1.13%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.14 *   2.73%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.24 *   0.74%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         4.41 (   0.00%)        4.31 *   2.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        3.45 (   0.00%)        3.44 *   0.40%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        2.75 (   0.00%)        2.75 *  -0.28%*
> 
> - AMD Speedway Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7601, Zen 1, 64-core, 8
>   NUMA nodes, x86_64. Lots of variance between tests on this platform. It'll
>   easily swing -+5% on each result. 
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1          69.20 (   0.00%)       66.21 *   4.32%*
> Amean     system-4          70.79 (   0.00%)       69.01 *   2.52%*
> Amean     system-7          71.34 (   0.00%)       69.16 *   3.05%*
> Amean     system-12         74.00 (   0.00%)       72.74 *   1.70%*
> Amean     system-21         86.01 (   0.00%)       85.70 *   0.36%*
> Amean     system-30         89.21 (   0.00%)       89.93 *  -0.80%*
> Amean     system-48         92.39 (   0.00%)       92.43 *  -0.04%*
> Amean     system-79        120.19 (   0.00%)      121.30 *  -0.92%*
> Amean     system-110       172.79 (   0.00%)      179.37 *  -3.81%*
> Amean     system-128       201.70 (   0.00%)      212.57 *  -5.39%*
> Amean     elapsed-1         72.23 (   0.00%)       69.29 *   4.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         18.69 (   0.00%)       18.28 *   2.20%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         10.80 (   0.00%)       10.54 *   2.41%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         6.62 (   0.00%)        6.53 *   1.30%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         4.68 (   0.00%)        4.69 *  -0.14%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         3.44 (   0.00%)        3.50 *  -1.66%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         2.40 (   0.00%)        2.42 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         2.05 (   0.00%)        2.09 *  -1.90%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        1.83 (   0.00%)        1.91 *  -4.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -5.99%*
> 
> - IBM 9006-22C system, 2 sockets, POWER9, 64-Core, 1 NUMA node per cpu,
>   pppc64le.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1           1.82 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -1.43%*
> Amean     system-4           2.18 (   0.00%)        2.22 *  -2.02%*
> Amean     system-7           3.27 (   0.00%)        3.28 *  -0.15%*
> Amean     system-12          5.22 (   0.00%)        5.20 *   0.26%*
> Amean     system-21         10.10 (   0.00%)       10.20 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     system-30         15.00 (   0.00%)       14.52 *   3.20%*
> Amean     system-48         26.41 (   0.00%)       25.96 *   1.71%*
> Amean     system-79         29.35 (   0.00%)       29.70 *  -1.21%*
> Amean     system-110        24.01 (   0.00%)       23.40 *   2.54%*
> Amean     system-128        24.57 (   0.00%)       25.32 *  -3.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-1          1.85 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -1.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-4          0.56 (   0.00%)        0.57 *  -1.72%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          0.51 (   0.00%)        0.50 *   0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         0.51 (   0.00%)        0.51 *   0.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.54 *   0.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.53 *   2.22%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         0.58 (   0.00%)        0.57 *   1.73%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.48 *   0.89%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        0.37 (   0.00%)        0.37 *  -1.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        0.33 (   0.00%)        0.33 *   0.00%*
> 
> - Ampere MtSnow, 1 socket, Neoverse-N1, 80-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                     vanilla		       rcu
> Amean     system-1         11.92 (   0.00%)       11.99 *  -0.61%*
> Amean     system-4         13.13 (   0.00%)       13.09 *   0.31%*
> Amean     system-7         13.91 (   0.00%)       13.94 *  -0.20%*
> Amean     system-12        15.77 (   0.00%)       15.69 *   0.48%*
> Amean     system-21        21.32 (   0.00%)       21.42 *  -0.46%*
> Amean     system-30        28.58 (   0.00%)       29.12 *  -1.90%*
> Amean     system-48        47.41 (   0.00%)       46.91 *   1.04%*
> Amean     system-79        76.76 (   0.00%)       77.16 *  -0.52%*
> Amean     system-80        77.98 (   0.00%)       78.23 *  -0.32%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        12.46 (   0.00%)       12.53 *  -0.58%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         3.47 (   0.00%)        3.46 *   0.34%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         2.18 (   0.00%)        2.21 *  -1.58%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        1.41 (   0.00%)        1.42 *  -0.80%*
> Amean     elapsed-21        1.09 (   0.00%)        1.12 *  -2.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        0.98 (   0.00%)        1.01 *  -3.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-48        1.08 (   0.00%)        1.10 *  -1.78%*
> Amean     elapsed-79        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   2.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-80        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   3.23%*
> 
> - Dell R430, 2 sockets, Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3, Sandy Bridge, 16-Cores, 2 NUMA
>   nodes, x86_64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                     vanilla		       rcu
> Amean     system-1         11.10 (   0.00%)       11.07 *   0.24%*
> Amean     system-3         11.14 (   0.00%)       11.10 *   0.34%*
> Amean     system-5         11.18 (   0.00%)       11.13 *   0.47%*
> Amean     system-7         11.21 (   0.00%)       11.17 *   0.38%*
> Amean     system-12        11.28 (   0.00%)       11.28 (  -0.03%)
> Amean     system-18        13.24 (   0.00%)       13.25 *  -0.11%*
> Amean     system-24        17.12 (   0.00%)       17.14 (  -0.13%)
> Amean     system-30        21.10 (   0.00%)       21.23 *  -0.60%*
> Amean     system-32        22.31 (   0.00%)       22.47 *  -0.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        11.76 (   0.00%)       11.73 *   0.29%*
> Amean     elapsed-3         3.93 (   0.00%)        3.93 *   0.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-5         2.39 (   0.00%)        2.37 *   0.74%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         1.72 (   0.00%)        1.71 *   0.81%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        1.02 (   0.00%)        1.03 (  -0.42%)
> Amean     elapsed-18        1.13 (   0.00%)        1.14 (  -0.18%)
> Amean     elapsed-24        0.87 (   0.00%)        0.88 *  -0.65%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        0.77 (   0.00%)        0.78 *  -0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-32        0.74 (   0.00%)        0.74 (   0.00%)
> 
> - HPE Apollo 70, 2 sockets, Cavium ThunderX2, 128-Cores, 2 NUMA nodes, arm64.
>   NOTE: The test here only goes up to 128 for some reason, although there are
>   256 CPUs. Maybe a mmtests issue? I didn't investigate.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla		        rcu
> Amean     system-1           4.42 (   0.00%)        4.36 *   1.29%*
> Amean     system-4           4.56 (   0.00%)        4.51 *   1.05%*
> Amean     system-7           4.63 (   0.00%)        4.65 *  -0.42%*
> Amean     system-12          5.96 (   0.00%)        6.02 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     system-21         10.97 (   0.00%)       11.01 *  -0.32%*
> Amean     system-30         16.01 (   0.00%)       16.04 *  -0.19%*
> Amean     system-48         26.81 (   0.00%)       26.78 *   0.09%*
> Amean     system-79         30.80 (   0.00%)       30.85 *  -0.16%*
> Amean     system-110        31.87 (   0.00%)       31.93 *  -0.19%*
> Amean     system-128        36.27 (   0.00%)       36.31 *  -0.10%*
> Amean     elapsed-1          4.88 (   0.00%)        4.85 *   0.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-4          1.27 (   0.00%)        1.26 *   1.00%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          0.73 (   0.00%)        0.74 *  -0.46%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         0.55 (   0.00%)        0.55 *   1.09%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         0.59 (   0.00%)        0.60 *  -0.96%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.44%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.49 *  -0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        0.36 (   0.00%)        0.36 *   0.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        0.31 (   0.00%)        0.31 *  -0.43%*
> 
> - Raspberry Pi 4, 1 socket, bcm2711, Cortex-A72, 4-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                    vanilla		      rcu
> Amean     system-1         0.67 (   0.00%)        0.67 *  -1.25%*
> Amean     system-3         1.30 (   0.00%)        1.29 *   0.62%*
> Amean     system-4         1.61 (   0.00%)        1.59 *   0.95%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        0.71 (   0.00%)        0.72 *  -1.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-3        0.45 (   0.00%)        0.45 *   0.88%*
> Amean     elapsed-4        0.42 (   0.00%)        0.42 *   1.19%*
> 
>
Nicolas Saenz Julienne Feb. 9, 2022, 9:45 a.m. UTC | #4
Hi Xiongfeng, thanks for taking the time to look at this.

On Wed, 2022-02-09 at 16:55 +0800, Xiongfeng Wang wrote:
> Hi Nicolas,
> 
> When I applied the patchset on the following commit and tested on QEMU, I came
> accross the following CallTrace.
>   commit dd81e1c7d5fb126e5fbc5c9e334d7b3ec29a16a0
> 
> I wrote a userspace application to consume the memory. When the memory is used
> out, the OOM killer is triggered and the following Calltrace is printed. I am
> not sure if it is related to this patchset. But when I reverted this patchset,
> the 'NULL pointer' Calltrace didn't show.

It's a silly mistake on my part, while cleaning up the code I messed up one of
the 'struct per_cpu_pages' accessors. This should fix it:

------------------------->8-------------------------
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 0caa7155ca34..e65b991c3dc8 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3279,7 +3279,7 @@ static void __drain_all_pages(struct zone *zone, bool force_all_cpus)
                                has_pcps = true;
                } else {
                        for_each_populated_zone(z) {
-                               pcp = per_cpu_ptr(zone->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
+                               pcp = per_cpu_ptr(z->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
                                lp = rcu_dereference_protected(pcp->lp,
                                                mutex_is_locked(&pcpu_drain_mutex));
                                if (lp->count) {
------------------------->8-------------------------

Thanks!
Xiongfeng Wang Feb. 9, 2022, 11:26 a.m. UTC | #5
Hi,

On 2022/2/9 17:45, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> Hi Xiongfeng, thanks for taking the time to look at this.
> 
> On Wed, 2022-02-09 at 16:55 +0800, Xiongfeng Wang wrote:
>> Hi Nicolas,
>>
>> When I applied the patchset on the following commit and tested on QEMU, I came
>> accross the following CallTrace.
>>   commit dd81e1c7d5fb126e5fbc5c9e334d7b3ec29a16a0
>>
>> I wrote a userspace application to consume the memory. When the memory is used
>> out, the OOM killer is triggered and the following Calltrace is printed. I am
>> not sure if it is related to this patchset. But when I reverted this patchset,
>> the 'NULL pointer' Calltrace didn't show.
> 
> It's a silly mistake on my part, while cleaning up the code I messed up one of
> the 'struct per_cpu_pages' accessors. This should fix it:
> 
> ------------------------->8-------------------------
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index 0caa7155ca34..e65b991c3dc8 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -3279,7 +3279,7 @@ static void __drain_all_pages(struct zone *zone, bool force_all_cpus)
>                                 has_pcps = true;
>                 } else {
>                         for_each_populated_zone(z) {
> -                               pcp = per_cpu_ptr(zone->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
> +                               pcp = per_cpu_ptr(z->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
>                                 lp = rcu_dereference_protected(pcp->lp,
>                                                 mutex_is_locked(&pcpu_drain_mutex));
>                                 if (lp->count) {

I have tested it. It works well. No more 'NULL pointer' Calltrace.

Thanks,
Xiongfeng

> ------------------------->8-------------------------
> 
> Thanks!
>
Nicolas Saenz Julienne Feb. 9, 2022, 11:36 a.m. UTC | #6
On Wed, 2022-02-09 at 19:26 +0800, Xiongfeng Wang wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2022/2/9 17:45, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > Hi Xiongfeng, thanks for taking the time to look at this.
> > 
> > On Wed, 2022-02-09 at 16:55 +0800, Xiongfeng Wang wrote:
> > > Hi Nicolas,
> > > 
> > > When I applied the patchset on the following commit and tested on QEMU, I came
> > > accross the following CallTrace.
> > >   commit dd81e1c7d5fb126e5fbc5c9e334d7b3ec29a16a0
> > > 
> > > I wrote a userspace application to consume the memory. When the memory is used
> > > out, the OOM killer is triggered and the following Calltrace is printed. I am
> > > not sure if it is related to this patchset. But when I reverted this patchset,
> > > the 'NULL pointer' Calltrace didn't show.
> > 
> > It's a silly mistake on my part, while cleaning up the code I messed up one of
> > the 'struct per_cpu_pages' accessors. This should fix it:
> > 
> > ------------------------->8-------------------------
> > diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> > index 0caa7155ca34..e65b991c3dc8 100644
> > --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> > +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> > @@ -3279,7 +3279,7 @@ static void __drain_all_pages(struct zone *zone, bool force_all_cpus)
> >                                 has_pcps = true;
> >                 } else {
> >                         for_each_populated_zone(z) {
> > -                               pcp = per_cpu_ptr(zone->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
> > +                               pcp = per_cpu_ptr(z->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
> >                                 lp = rcu_dereference_protected(pcp->lp,
> >                                                 mutex_is_locked(&pcpu_drain_mutex));
> >                                 if (lp->count) {
> 
> I have tested it. It works well. No more 'NULL pointer' Calltrace.

Thanks!
Xiongfeng Wang Feb. 10, 2022, 10:59 a.m. UTC | #7
Hi Nicolas,

I found there are several 'lru_add_drain_per_cpu()' worker thread on the
NOHZ_FULL CPUs. I am just wondering do you have plan to add support for remote
per-cpu LRU pagevec drain ?

Thanks,
Xiongfeng

On 2022/2/8 18:07, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> virtualised systems.
> 
> The new algorithm will atomically switch the pointer to the per-cpu page lists
> and use RCU to make sure it's not being concurrently used before draining the
> lists. And its main benefit of is that it fixes the issue for good, avoiding
> the need for configuration based heuristics or having to modify applications
> (i.e. using the isolation prctrl being worked by Marcello Tosatti ATM).
> 
> All this with minimal performance implications: a page allocation
> microbenchmark was run on multiple systems and architectures generally showing
> no performance differences, only the more extreme cases showed a 1-3%
> degradation. See data below. Needless to say that I'd appreciate if someone
> could validate my values independently.
> 
> The approach has been stress-tested: I forced 100 drains/s while running
> mmtests' pft in a loop for a full day on multiple machines and archs (arm64,
> x86_64, ppc64le).
> 
> Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
>  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
>    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
>    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
>    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
>  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
>    performance degradation was too big.
> 
> Previous RFC: https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/10/8/793
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/9/21/599
> [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/11/3/644
> 
> ---
> 
> Changes since RFC:
>  - Get rid of aesthetic changes that affected performance
>  - Add more documentation
>  - Add better commit messages
>  - Pass sparse tests
>  - Verify this_cpu_*() usage
>  - Performance measurements
> 
> Nicolas Saenz Julienne (2):
>   mm/page_alloc: Access lists in 'struct per_cpu_pages' indirectly
>   mm/page_alloc: Add remote draining support to per-cpu lists
> 
>  include/linux/mmzone.h |  28 +++++-
>  mm/page_alloc.c        | 212 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>  mm/vmstat.c            |   6 +-
>  3 files changed, 162 insertions(+), 84 deletions(-)
> 
> 
> -------------------------Performance results-----------------------------
> 
> I'm focusing on mmtests' Page Fault Test (pft), as it's page allocator
> intensive.
> 
> - AMD Daytona Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7742, Zen 2, 64-Core,
>   4 NUMA nodes, x86_64
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1          58.52 (   0.00%)       58.92 *  -0.68%*
> Amean     system-4          61.00 (   0.00%)       61.41 *  -0.67%*
> Amean     system-7          61.55 (   0.00%)       61.74 *  -0.30%*
> Amean     system-12         64.91 (   0.00%)       64.94 *  -0.05%*
> Amean     system-21         98.80 (   0.00%)       99.92 *  -1.13%*
> Amean     system-30        147.68 (   0.00%)      145.83 *   1.25%*
> Amean     system-48        237.04 (   0.00%)      241.29 *  -1.79%*
> Amean     system-79        286.61 (   0.00%)      283.72 *   1.01%*
> Amean     system-110       303.40 (   0.00%)      299.91 *   1.15%*
> Amean     system-128       345.07 (   0.00%)      342.10 *   0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-1         61.21 (   0.00%)       61.65 *  -0.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         15.94 (   0.00%)       16.05 *  -0.69%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          9.24 (   0.00%)        9.28 *  -0.47%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         5.70 (   0.00%)        5.70 *  -0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         5.11 (   0.00%)        5.06 *   1.13%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.14 *   2.73%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.24 *   0.74%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         4.41 (   0.00%)        4.31 *   2.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        3.45 (   0.00%)        3.44 *   0.40%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        2.75 (   0.00%)        2.75 *  -0.28%*
> 
> - AMD Speedway Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7601, Zen 1, 64-core, 8
>   NUMA nodes, x86_64. Lots of variance between tests on this platform. It'll
>   easily swing -+5% on each result. 
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1          69.20 (   0.00%)       66.21 *   4.32%*
> Amean     system-4          70.79 (   0.00%)       69.01 *   2.52%*
> Amean     system-7          71.34 (   0.00%)       69.16 *   3.05%*
> Amean     system-12         74.00 (   0.00%)       72.74 *   1.70%*
> Amean     system-21         86.01 (   0.00%)       85.70 *   0.36%*
> Amean     system-30         89.21 (   0.00%)       89.93 *  -0.80%*
> Amean     system-48         92.39 (   0.00%)       92.43 *  -0.04%*
> Amean     system-79        120.19 (   0.00%)      121.30 *  -0.92%*
> Amean     system-110       172.79 (   0.00%)      179.37 *  -3.81%*
> Amean     system-128       201.70 (   0.00%)      212.57 *  -5.39%*
> Amean     elapsed-1         72.23 (   0.00%)       69.29 *   4.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         18.69 (   0.00%)       18.28 *   2.20%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         10.80 (   0.00%)       10.54 *   2.41%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         6.62 (   0.00%)        6.53 *   1.30%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         4.68 (   0.00%)        4.69 *  -0.14%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         3.44 (   0.00%)        3.50 *  -1.66%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         2.40 (   0.00%)        2.42 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         2.05 (   0.00%)        2.09 *  -1.90%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        1.83 (   0.00%)        1.91 *  -4.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -5.99%*
> 
> - IBM 9006-22C system, 2 sockets, POWER9, 64-Core, 1 NUMA node per cpu,
>   pppc64le.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1           1.82 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -1.43%*
> Amean     system-4           2.18 (   0.00%)        2.22 *  -2.02%*
> Amean     system-7           3.27 (   0.00%)        3.28 *  -0.15%*
> Amean     system-12          5.22 (   0.00%)        5.20 *   0.26%*
> Amean     system-21         10.10 (   0.00%)       10.20 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     system-30         15.00 (   0.00%)       14.52 *   3.20%*
> Amean     system-48         26.41 (   0.00%)       25.96 *   1.71%*
> Amean     system-79         29.35 (   0.00%)       29.70 *  -1.21%*
> Amean     system-110        24.01 (   0.00%)       23.40 *   2.54%*
> Amean     system-128        24.57 (   0.00%)       25.32 *  -3.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-1          1.85 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -1.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-4          0.56 (   0.00%)        0.57 *  -1.72%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          0.51 (   0.00%)        0.50 *   0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         0.51 (   0.00%)        0.51 *   0.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.54 *   0.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.53 *   2.22%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         0.58 (   0.00%)        0.57 *   1.73%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.48 *   0.89%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        0.37 (   0.00%)        0.37 *  -1.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        0.33 (   0.00%)        0.33 *   0.00%*
> 
> - Ampere MtSnow, 1 socket, Neoverse-N1, 80-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                     vanilla		       rcu
> Amean     system-1         11.92 (   0.00%)       11.99 *  -0.61%*
> Amean     system-4         13.13 (   0.00%)       13.09 *   0.31%*
> Amean     system-7         13.91 (   0.00%)       13.94 *  -0.20%*
> Amean     system-12        15.77 (   0.00%)       15.69 *   0.48%*
> Amean     system-21        21.32 (   0.00%)       21.42 *  -0.46%*
> Amean     system-30        28.58 (   0.00%)       29.12 *  -1.90%*
> Amean     system-48        47.41 (   0.00%)       46.91 *   1.04%*
> Amean     system-79        76.76 (   0.00%)       77.16 *  -0.52%*
> Amean     system-80        77.98 (   0.00%)       78.23 *  -0.32%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        12.46 (   0.00%)       12.53 *  -0.58%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         3.47 (   0.00%)        3.46 *   0.34%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         2.18 (   0.00%)        2.21 *  -1.58%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        1.41 (   0.00%)        1.42 *  -0.80%*
> Amean     elapsed-21        1.09 (   0.00%)        1.12 *  -2.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        0.98 (   0.00%)        1.01 *  -3.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-48        1.08 (   0.00%)        1.10 *  -1.78%*
> Amean     elapsed-79        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   2.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-80        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   3.23%*
> 
> - Dell R430, 2 sockets, Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3, Sandy Bridge, 16-Cores, 2 NUMA
>   nodes, x86_64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                     vanilla		       rcu
> Amean     system-1         11.10 (   0.00%)       11.07 *   0.24%*
> Amean     system-3         11.14 (   0.00%)       11.10 *   0.34%*
> Amean     system-5         11.18 (   0.00%)       11.13 *   0.47%*
> Amean     system-7         11.21 (   0.00%)       11.17 *   0.38%*
> Amean     system-12        11.28 (   0.00%)       11.28 (  -0.03%)
> Amean     system-18        13.24 (   0.00%)       13.25 *  -0.11%*
> Amean     system-24        17.12 (   0.00%)       17.14 (  -0.13%)
> Amean     system-30        21.10 (   0.00%)       21.23 *  -0.60%*
> Amean     system-32        22.31 (   0.00%)       22.47 *  -0.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        11.76 (   0.00%)       11.73 *   0.29%*
> Amean     elapsed-3         3.93 (   0.00%)        3.93 *   0.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-5         2.39 (   0.00%)        2.37 *   0.74%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         1.72 (   0.00%)        1.71 *   0.81%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        1.02 (   0.00%)        1.03 (  -0.42%)
> Amean     elapsed-18        1.13 (   0.00%)        1.14 (  -0.18%)
> Amean     elapsed-24        0.87 (   0.00%)        0.88 *  -0.65%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        0.77 (   0.00%)        0.78 *  -0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-32        0.74 (   0.00%)        0.74 (   0.00%)
> 
> - HPE Apollo 70, 2 sockets, Cavium ThunderX2, 128-Cores, 2 NUMA nodes, arm64.
>   NOTE: The test here only goes up to 128 for some reason, although there are
>   256 CPUs. Maybe a mmtests issue? I didn't investigate.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla		        rcu
> Amean     system-1           4.42 (   0.00%)        4.36 *   1.29%*
> Amean     system-4           4.56 (   0.00%)        4.51 *   1.05%*
> Amean     system-7           4.63 (   0.00%)        4.65 *  -0.42%*
> Amean     system-12          5.96 (   0.00%)        6.02 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     system-21         10.97 (   0.00%)       11.01 *  -0.32%*
> Amean     system-30         16.01 (   0.00%)       16.04 *  -0.19%*
> Amean     system-48         26.81 (   0.00%)       26.78 *   0.09%*
> Amean     system-79         30.80 (   0.00%)       30.85 *  -0.16%*
> Amean     system-110        31.87 (   0.00%)       31.93 *  -0.19%*
> Amean     system-128        36.27 (   0.00%)       36.31 *  -0.10%*
> Amean     elapsed-1          4.88 (   0.00%)        4.85 *   0.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-4          1.27 (   0.00%)        1.26 *   1.00%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          0.73 (   0.00%)        0.74 *  -0.46%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         0.55 (   0.00%)        0.55 *   1.09%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         0.59 (   0.00%)        0.60 *  -0.96%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.44%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.49 *  -0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        0.36 (   0.00%)        0.36 *   0.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        0.31 (   0.00%)        0.31 *  -0.43%*
> 
> - Raspberry Pi 4, 1 socket, bcm2711, Cortex-A72, 4-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                    vanilla		      rcu
> Amean     system-1         0.67 (   0.00%)        0.67 *  -1.25%*
> Amean     system-3         1.30 (   0.00%)        1.29 *   0.62%*
> Amean     system-4         1.61 (   0.00%)        1.59 *   0.95%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        0.71 (   0.00%)        0.72 *  -1.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-3        0.45 (   0.00%)        0.45 *   0.88%*
> Amean     elapsed-4        0.42 (   0.00%)        0.42 *   1.19%*
> 
>
Nicolas Saenz Julienne Feb. 10, 2022, 11:04 a.m. UTC | #8
On Thu, 2022-02-10 at 18:59 +0800, Xiongfeng Wang wrote:
> Hi Nicolas,
> 
> I found there are several 'lru_add_drain_per_cpu()' worker thread on the
> NOHZ_FULL CPUs. I am just wondering do you have plan to add support for remote
> per-cpu LRU pagevec drain ?

Yes, this is something we've been meaning to fix too. But haven't started
looking into it yet (maybe Marcelo can contradict me here).

Regards,
Nicolas
Mel Gorman March 3, 2022, 11:45 a.m. UTC | #9
On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 11:07:48AM +0100, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> virtualised systems.
> 

I know this has been sitting here for a long while. Last few weeks have
not been fun.

> Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
>  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
>    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
>    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
>    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
>  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
>    performance degradation was too big.
> 

For unrelated reasons I looked at using llist to avoid locks entirely. It
turns out it's not possible and needs a lock. We know "local_locks to
per-cpu spinlocks" took a large penalty so I considered alternatives on
how a lock could be used.  I found it's possible to both remote drain
the lists and avoid the disable/enable of IRQs entirely as long as a
preempting IRQ is willing to take the zone lock instead (should be very
rare). The IRQ part is a bit hairy though as softirqs are also a problem
and preempt-rt needs different rules and the llist has to sort PCP
refills which might be a loss in total. However, the remote draining may
still be interesting. The full series is at
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mel/linux.git/ mm-pcpllist-v1r2

It's still waiting on tests to complete and not all the changelogs are
complete which is why it's not posted.

This is a comparison of vanilla vs "local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks"
versus the git series up to "mm/page_alloc: Remotely drain per-cpu lists"
for the page faulting microbench I originally complained about.  The test
machine is a 2-socket CascadeLake machine.

pft timings
                                 5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5
                                    vanilla    mm-remotedrain-v2r1       mm-pcpdrain-v1r1
Amean     elapsed-1        32.54 (   0.00%)       33.08 *  -1.66%*       32.82 *  -0.86%*
Amean     elapsed-4         8.66 (   0.00%)        9.24 *  -6.72%*        8.69 *  -0.38%*
Amean     elapsed-7         5.02 (   0.00%)        5.43 *  -8.16%*        5.05 *  -0.55%*
Amean     elapsed-12        3.07 (   0.00%)        3.38 * -10.00%*        3.09 *  -0.72%*
Amean     elapsed-21        2.36 (   0.00%)        2.38 *  -0.89%*        2.19 *   7.39%*
Amean     elapsed-30        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -6.50%*        1.62 *   7.59%*
Amean     elapsed-48        1.71 (   0.00%)        2.00 * -17.32%*        1.71 (  -0.08%)
Amean     elapsed-79        1.56 (   0.00%)        1.62 *  -3.84%*        1.56 (  -0.02%)
Amean     elapsed-80        1.57 (   0.00%)        1.65 *  -5.31%*        1.57 (  -0.04%)

Note the local_lock conversion took 1 1-17% penalty while the git tree
takes a negligile penalty while still allowing remote drains. It might
have some potential while being less complex than the RCU approach.
Vlastimil Babka March 3, 2022, 1:27 p.m. UTC | #10
On 2/8/22 11:07, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> virtualised systems.
> 
> The new algorithm will atomically switch the pointer to the per-cpu page lists
> and use RCU to make sure it's not being concurrently used before draining the
> lists. And its main benefit of is that it fixes the issue for good, avoiding
> the need for configuration based heuristics or having to modify applications
> (i.e. using the isolation prctrl being worked by Marcello Tosatti ATM).
> 
> All this with minimal performance implications: a page allocation
> microbenchmark was run on multiple systems and architectures generally showing
> no performance differences, only the more extreme cases showed a 1-3%
> degradation. See data below. Needless to say that I'd appreciate if someone
> could validate my values independently.
> 
> The approach has been stress-tested: I forced 100 drains/s while running
> mmtests' pft in a loop for a full day on multiple machines and archs (arm64,
> x86_64, ppc64le).
> 
> Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
>  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
>    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
>    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
>    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
>  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
>    performance degradation was too big.

For completeness, what was the fate of the approach to have pcp->high = 0
for NOHZ cpus? [1] It would be nice to have documented why it wasn't
feasible. Too much overhead for when these CPUs eventually do allocate, or
some other unforeseen issue? Thanks.

[1]
https://lore.kernel.org/all/43462fe11258395f4e885c3d594a3ed1b604b858.camel@redhat.com/

> Previous RFC: https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/10/8/793
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/9/21/599
> [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/11/3/644
> 
> ---
> 
> Changes since RFC:
>  - Get rid of aesthetic changes that affected performance
>  - Add more documentation
>  - Add better commit messages
>  - Pass sparse tests
>  - Verify this_cpu_*() usage
>  - Performance measurements
> 
> Nicolas Saenz Julienne (2):
>   mm/page_alloc: Access lists in 'struct per_cpu_pages' indirectly
>   mm/page_alloc: Add remote draining support to per-cpu lists
> 
>  include/linux/mmzone.h |  28 +++++-
>  mm/page_alloc.c        | 212 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>  mm/vmstat.c            |   6 +-
>  3 files changed, 162 insertions(+), 84 deletions(-)
> 
> 
> -------------------------Performance results-----------------------------
> 
> I'm focusing on mmtests' Page Fault Test (pft), as it's page allocator
> intensive.
> 
> - AMD Daytona Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7742, Zen 2, 64-Core,
>   4 NUMA nodes, x86_64
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1          58.52 (   0.00%)       58.92 *  -0.68%*
> Amean     system-4          61.00 (   0.00%)       61.41 *  -0.67%*
> Amean     system-7          61.55 (   0.00%)       61.74 *  -0.30%*
> Amean     system-12         64.91 (   0.00%)       64.94 *  -0.05%*
> Amean     system-21         98.80 (   0.00%)       99.92 *  -1.13%*
> Amean     system-30        147.68 (   0.00%)      145.83 *   1.25%*
> Amean     system-48        237.04 (   0.00%)      241.29 *  -1.79%*
> Amean     system-79        286.61 (   0.00%)      283.72 *   1.01%*
> Amean     system-110       303.40 (   0.00%)      299.91 *   1.15%*
> Amean     system-128       345.07 (   0.00%)      342.10 *   0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-1         61.21 (   0.00%)       61.65 *  -0.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         15.94 (   0.00%)       16.05 *  -0.69%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          9.24 (   0.00%)        9.28 *  -0.47%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         5.70 (   0.00%)        5.70 *  -0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         5.11 (   0.00%)        5.06 *   1.13%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.14 *   2.73%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         5.28 (   0.00%)        5.24 *   0.74%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         4.41 (   0.00%)        4.31 *   2.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        3.45 (   0.00%)        3.44 *   0.40%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        2.75 (   0.00%)        2.75 *  -0.28%*
> 
> - AMD Speedway Reference System, 2 sockets, AMD EPYC 7601, Zen 1, 64-core, 8
>   NUMA nodes, x86_64. Lots of variance between tests on this platform. It'll
>   easily swing -+5% on each result. 
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1          69.20 (   0.00%)       66.21 *   4.32%*
> Amean     system-4          70.79 (   0.00%)       69.01 *   2.52%*
> Amean     system-7          71.34 (   0.00%)       69.16 *   3.05%*
> Amean     system-12         74.00 (   0.00%)       72.74 *   1.70%*
> Amean     system-21         86.01 (   0.00%)       85.70 *   0.36%*
> Amean     system-30         89.21 (   0.00%)       89.93 *  -0.80%*
> Amean     system-48         92.39 (   0.00%)       92.43 *  -0.04%*
> Amean     system-79        120.19 (   0.00%)      121.30 *  -0.92%*
> Amean     system-110       172.79 (   0.00%)      179.37 *  -3.81%*
> Amean     system-128       201.70 (   0.00%)      212.57 *  -5.39%*
> Amean     elapsed-1         72.23 (   0.00%)       69.29 *   4.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         18.69 (   0.00%)       18.28 *   2.20%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         10.80 (   0.00%)       10.54 *   2.41%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         6.62 (   0.00%)        6.53 *   1.30%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         4.68 (   0.00%)        4.69 *  -0.14%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         3.44 (   0.00%)        3.50 *  -1.66%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         2.40 (   0.00%)        2.42 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         2.05 (   0.00%)        2.09 *  -1.90%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        1.83 (   0.00%)        1.91 *  -4.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -5.99%*
> 
> - IBM 9006-22C system, 2 sockets, POWER9, 64-Core, 1 NUMA node per cpu,
>   pppc64le.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla                    rcu
> Amean     system-1           1.82 (   0.00%)        1.85 *  -1.43%*
> Amean     system-4           2.18 (   0.00%)        2.22 *  -2.02%*
> Amean     system-7           3.27 (   0.00%)        3.28 *  -0.15%*
> Amean     system-12          5.22 (   0.00%)        5.20 *   0.26%*
> Amean     system-21         10.10 (   0.00%)       10.20 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     system-30         15.00 (   0.00%)       14.52 *   3.20%*
> Amean     system-48         26.41 (   0.00%)       25.96 *   1.71%*
> Amean     system-79         29.35 (   0.00%)       29.70 *  -1.21%*
> Amean     system-110        24.01 (   0.00%)       23.40 *   2.54%*
> Amean     system-128        24.57 (   0.00%)       25.32 *  -3.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-1          1.85 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -1.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-4          0.56 (   0.00%)        0.57 *  -1.72%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          0.51 (   0.00%)        0.50 *   0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         0.51 (   0.00%)        0.51 *   0.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.54 *   0.06%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         0.54 (   0.00%)        0.53 *   2.22%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         0.58 (   0.00%)        0.57 *   1.73%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.48 *   0.89%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        0.37 (   0.00%)        0.37 *  -1.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        0.33 (   0.00%)        0.33 *   0.00%*
> 
> - Ampere MtSnow, 1 socket, Neoverse-N1, 80-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                     vanilla		       rcu
> Amean     system-1         11.92 (   0.00%)       11.99 *  -0.61%*
> Amean     system-4         13.13 (   0.00%)       13.09 *   0.31%*
> Amean     system-7         13.91 (   0.00%)       13.94 *  -0.20%*
> Amean     system-12        15.77 (   0.00%)       15.69 *   0.48%*
> Amean     system-21        21.32 (   0.00%)       21.42 *  -0.46%*
> Amean     system-30        28.58 (   0.00%)       29.12 *  -1.90%*
> Amean     system-48        47.41 (   0.00%)       46.91 *   1.04%*
> Amean     system-79        76.76 (   0.00%)       77.16 *  -0.52%*
> Amean     system-80        77.98 (   0.00%)       78.23 *  -0.32%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        12.46 (   0.00%)       12.53 *  -0.58%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         3.47 (   0.00%)        3.46 *   0.34%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         2.18 (   0.00%)        2.21 *  -1.58%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        1.41 (   0.00%)        1.42 *  -0.80%*
> Amean     elapsed-21        1.09 (   0.00%)        1.12 *  -2.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        0.98 (   0.00%)        1.01 *  -3.08%*
> Amean     elapsed-48        1.08 (   0.00%)        1.10 *  -1.78%*
> Amean     elapsed-79        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   2.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-80        1.32 (   0.00%)        1.28 *   3.23%*
> 
> - Dell R430, 2 sockets, Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3, Sandy Bridge, 16-Cores, 2 NUMA
>   nodes, x86_64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                     vanilla		       rcu
> Amean     system-1         11.10 (   0.00%)       11.07 *   0.24%*
> Amean     system-3         11.14 (   0.00%)       11.10 *   0.34%*
> Amean     system-5         11.18 (   0.00%)       11.13 *   0.47%*
> Amean     system-7         11.21 (   0.00%)       11.17 *   0.38%*
> Amean     system-12        11.28 (   0.00%)       11.28 (  -0.03%)
> Amean     system-18        13.24 (   0.00%)       13.25 *  -0.11%*
> Amean     system-24        17.12 (   0.00%)       17.14 (  -0.13%)
> Amean     system-30        21.10 (   0.00%)       21.23 *  -0.60%*
> Amean     system-32        22.31 (   0.00%)       22.47 *  -0.71%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        11.76 (   0.00%)       11.73 *   0.29%*
> Amean     elapsed-3         3.93 (   0.00%)        3.93 *   0.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-5         2.39 (   0.00%)        2.37 *   0.74%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         1.72 (   0.00%)        1.71 *   0.81%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        1.02 (   0.00%)        1.03 (  -0.42%)
> Amean     elapsed-18        1.13 (   0.00%)        1.14 (  -0.18%)
> Amean     elapsed-24        0.87 (   0.00%)        0.88 *  -0.65%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        0.77 (   0.00%)        0.78 *  -0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-32        0.74 (   0.00%)        0.74 (   0.00%)
> 
> - HPE Apollo 70, 2 sockets, Cavium ThunderX2, 128-Cores, 2 NUMA nodes, arm64.
>   NOTE: The test here only goes up to 128 for some reason, although there are
>   256 CPUs. Maybe a mmtests issue? I didn't investigate.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                      vanilla		        rcu
> Amean     system-1           4.42 (   0.00%)        4.36 *   1.29%*
> Amean     system-4           4.56 (   0.00%)        4.51 *   1.05%*
> Amean     system-7           4.63 (   0.00%)        4.65 *  -0.42%*
> Amean     system-12          5.96 (   0.00%)        6.02 *  -1.00%*
> Amean     system-21         10.97 (   0.00%)       11.01 *  -0.32%*
> Amean     system-30         16.01 (   0.00%)       16.04 *  -0.19%*
> Amean     system-48         26.81 (   0.00%)       26.78 *   0.09%*
> Amean     system-79         30.80 (   0.00%)       30.85 *  -0.16%*
> Amean     system-110        31.87 (   0.00%)       31.93 *  -0.19%*
> Amean     system-128        36.27 (   0.00%)       36.31 *  -0.10%*
> Amean     elapsed-1          4.88 (   0.00%)        4.85 *   0.60%*
> Amean     elapsed-4          1.27 (   0.00%)        1.26 *   1.00%*
> Amean     elapsed-7          0.73 (   0.00%)        0.74 *  -0.46%*
> Amean     elapsed-12         0.55 (   0.00%)        0.55 *   1.09%*
> Amean     elapsed-21         0.59 (   0.00%)        0.60 *  -0.96%*
> Amean     elapsed-30         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-48         0.60 (   0.00%)        0.60 *   0.44%*
> Amean     elapsed-79         0.49 (   0.00%)        0.49 *  -0.07%*
> Amean     elapsed-110        0.36 (   0.00%)        0.36 *   0.28%*
> Amean     elapsed-128        0.31 (   0.00%)        0.31 *  -0.43%*
> 
> - Raspberry Pi 4, 1 socket, bcm2711, Cortex-A72, 4-Cores, 1 NUMA node, arm64.
> 
> pft timings:
>                                    vanilla		      rcu
> Amean     system-1         0.67 (   0.00%)        0.67 *  -1.25%*
> Amean     system-3         1.30 (   0.00%)        1.29 *   0.62%*
> Amean     system-4         1.61 (   0.00%)        1.59 *   0.95%*
> Amean     elapsed-1        0.71 (   0.00%)        0.72 *  -1.17%*
> Amean     elapsed-3        0.45 (   0.00%)        0.45 *   0.88%*
> Amean     elapsed-4        0.42 (   0.00%)        0.42 *   1.19%*
> 
>
Nicolas Saenz Julienne March 3, 2022, 2:10 p.m. UTC | #11
On Thu, 2022-03-03 at 14:27 +0100, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> On 2/8/22 11:07, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> > one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> > permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> > whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> > CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> > take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> > virtualised systems.
> > 
> > The new algorithm will atomically switch the pointer to the per-cpu page lists
> > and use RCU to make sure it's not being concurrently used before draining the
> > lists. And its main benefit of is that it fixes the issue for good, avoiding
> > the need for configuration based heuristics or having to modify applications
> > (i.e. using the isolation prctrl being worked by Marcello Tosatti ATM).
> > 
> > All this with minimal performance implications: a page allocation
> > microbenchmark was run on multiple systems and architectures generally showing
> > no performance differences, only the more extreme cases showed a 1-3%
> > degradation. See data below. Needless to say that I'd appreciate if someone
> > could validate my values independently.
> > 
> > The approach has been stress-tested: I forced 100 drains/s while running
> > mmtests' pft in a loop for a full day on multiple machines and archs (arm64,
> > x86_64, ppc64le).
> > 
> > Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
> >  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
> >    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
> >    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
> >    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
> >  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
> >    performance degradation was too big.
> 
> For completeness, what was the fate of the approach to have pcp->high = 0
> for NOHZ cpus? [1] It would be nice to have documented why it wasn't
> feasible. Too much overhead for when these CPUs eventually do allocate, or
> some other unforeseen issue? Thanks.

Yes sorry, should've been more explicit on why I haven't gone that way yet.

Some points:
 - As I mention above, not only CPU isolation users care for this. RT and HPC
   do too. This is my main motivation for focusing on this solution, or
   potentially Mel's.

 - Fully disabling pcplists on nohz_full CPUs is too drastic, as isolated CPUs
   might want to retain the performance edge while not running their sensitive
   workloads. (I remember Christoph Lamenter's commenting about this on the
   previous RFC).

 - So the idea would be to selectively disable pcplists upon entering in the
   really 'isolated' area. This could be achieved with Marcelo Tosatti's new
   WIP prctrl[1]. And if we decide the current solutions are unacceptable I'll
   have a go at it.

Thanks!

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220204173554.534186379@fedora.localdomain/T/
Nicolas Saenz Julienne March 7, 2022, 1:57 p.m. UTC | #12
Hi Mel,
Thanks for having a look at this.

On Thu, 2022-03-03 at 11:45 +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 11:07:48AM +0100, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> > one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> > permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> > whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> > CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> > take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> > virtualised systems.
> > 
> 
> I know this has been sitting here for a long while. Last few weeks have
> not been fun.

No problem.

> > Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
> >  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
> >    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
> >    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
> >    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
> >  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
> >    performance degradation was too big.
> > 
> 
> For unrelated reasons I looked at using llist to avoid locks entirely. It
> turns out it's not possible and needs a lock. We know "local_locks to
> per-cpu spinlocks" took a large penalty so I considered alternatives on
> how a lock could be used.  I found it's possible to both remote drain
> the lists and avoid the disable/enable of IRQs entirely as long as a
> preempting IRQ is willing to take the zone lock instead (should be very
> rare). The IRQ part is a bit hairy though as softirqs are also a problem
> and preempt-rt needs different rules and the llist has to sort PCP
> refills which might be a loss in total. However, the remote draining may
> still be interesting. The full series is at
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mel/linux.git/ mm-pcpllist-v1r2

I'll have a proper look at it soon.

Regards,
Marcelo Tosatti March 7, 2022, 8:47 p.m. UTC | #13
On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 11:45:50AM +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 11:07:48AM +0100, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > This series replaces mm/page_alloc's per-cpu page lists drain mechanism with
> > one that allows accessing the lists remotely. Currently, only a local CPU is
> > permitted to change its per-cpu lists, and it's expected to do so, on-demand,
> > whenever a process demands it by means of queueing a drain task on the local
> > CPU. This causes problems for NOHZ_FULL CPUs and real-time systems that can't
> > take any sort of interruption and to some lesser extent inconveniences idle and
> > virtualised systems.
> > 
> 
> I know this has been sitting here for a long while. Last few weeks have
> not been fun.
> 
> > Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
> >  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
> >    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
> >    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
> >    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
> >  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
> >    performance degradation was too big.
> > 
> 
> For unrelated reasons I looked at using llist to avoid locks entirely. It
> turns out it's not possible and needs a lock. We know "local_locks to
> per-cpu spinlocks" took a large penalty so I considered alternatives on
> how a lock could be used.  I found it's possible to both remote drain
> the lists and avoid the disable/enable of IRQs entirely as long as a
> preempting IRQ is willing to take the zone lock instead (should be very
> rare). The IRQ part is a bit hairy though as softirqs are also a problem
> and preempt-rt needs different rules and the llist has to sort PCP
> refills which might be a loss in total. However, the remote draining may
> still be interesting. The full series is at
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mel/linux.git/ mm-pcpllist-v1r2
> 
> It's still waiting on tests to complete and not all the changelogs are
> complete which is why it's not posted.
> 
> This is a comparison of vanilla vs "local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks"
> versus the git series up to "mm/page_alloc: Remotely drain per-cpu lists"
> for the page faulting microbench I originally complained about.  The test
> machine is a 2-socket CascadeLake machine.
> 
> pft timings
>                                  5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5
>                                     vanilla    mm-remotedrain-v2r1       mm-pcpdrain-v1r1
> Amean     elapsed-1        32.54 (   0.00%)       33.08 *  -1.66%*       32.82 *  -0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         8.66 (   0.00%)        9.24 *  -6.72%*        8.69 *  -0.38%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         5.02 (   0.00%)        5.43 *  -8.16%*        5.05 *  -0.55%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        3.07 (   0.00%)        3.38 * -10.00%*        3.09 *  -0.72%*
> Amean     elapsed-21        2.36 (   0.00%)        2.38 *  -0.89%*        2.19 *   7.39%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -6.50%*        1.62 *   7.59%*
> Amean     elapsed-48        1.71 (   0.00%)        2.00 * -17.32%*        1.71 (  -0.08%)
> Amean     elapsed-79        1.56 (   0.00%)        1.62 *  -3.84%*        1.56 (  -0.02%)
> Amean     elapsed-80        1.57 (   0.00%)        1.65 *  -5.31%*        1.57 (  -0.04%)
> 
> Note the local_lock conversion took 1 1-17% penalty while the git tree
> takes a negligile penalty while still allowing remote drains. It might
> have some potential while being less complex than the RCU approach.

Nice!

Hopefully a spinlock can be added to "struct lru_pvecs" without
degradation in performance, similarly to what is done here.
Mel Gorman March 10, 2022, 4:31 p.m. UTC | #14
On Mon, Mar 07, 2022 at 02:57:47PM +0100, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > > Note that this is not the first attempt at fixing this per-cpu page lists:
> > >  - The first attempt[1] tried to conditionally change the pagesets locking
> > >    scheme based the NOHZ_FULL config. It was deemed hard to maintain as the
> > >    NOHZ_FULL code path would be rarely tested. Also, this only solves the issue
> > >    for NOHZ_FULL setups, which isn't ideal.
> > >  - The second[2] unanimously switched the local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks. The
> > >    performance degradation was too big.
> > > 
> > 
> > For unrelated reasons I looked at using llist to avoid locks entirely. It
> > turns out it's not possible and needs a lock. We know "local_locks to
> > per-cpu spinlocks" took a large penalty so I considered alternatives on
> > how a lock could be used.  I found it's possible to both remote drain
> > the lists and avoid the disable/enable of IRQs entirely as long as a
> > preempting IRQ is willing to take the zone lock instead (should be very
> > rare). The IRQ part is a bit hairy though as softirqs are also a problem
> > and preempt-rt needs different rules and the llist has to sort PCP
> > refills which might be a loss in total. However, the remote draining may
> > still be interesting. The full series is at
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mel/linux.git/ mm-pcpllist-v1r2
> 
> I'll have a proper look at it soon.
> 

Thanks. I'm still delayed actually finishing the series as most of my
time is dedicated to a separate issue. However, there is at least one
bug in there at patch "mm/page_alloc: Remotely drain per-cpu lists"
that causes a lockup under severe memory pressure. The fix is

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index c9a6f2b5548e..11b54f383d04 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3065,10 +3065,8 @@ static int rmqueue_bulk(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order,
  */
 void drain_zone_pages(struct zone *zone, struct per_cpu_pages *pcp)
 {
-	unsigned long flags;
 	int to_drain, batch;
 
-	pcp_local_lock(&pagesets.lock, flags);
 	batch = READ_ONCE(pcp->batch);
 	to_drain = min(pcp->count, batch);
 	if (to_drain > 0) {
@@ -3076,7 +3074,6 @@ void drain_zone_pages(struct zone *zone, struct per_cpu_pages *pcp)
 		free_pcppages_bulk(zone, to_drain, pcp, 0);
 		spin_unlock(&pcp->lock);
 	}
-	pcp_local_unlock(&pagesets.lock, flags);
 }
 #endif
 
@@ -3088,16 +3085,12 @@ static void drain_pages_zone(unsigned int cpu, struct zone *zone)
 	unsigned long flags;
 	struct per_cpu_pages *pcp;
 
-	pcp_local_lock(&pagesets.lock, flags);
-
 	pcp = per_cpu_ptr(zone->per_cpu_pageset, cpu);
 	if (pcp->count) {
 		spin_lock(&pcp->lock);
 		free_pcppages_bulk(zone, pcp->count, pcp, 0);
 		spin_unlock(&pcp->lock);
 	}
-
-	pcp_local_unlock(&pagesets.lock, flags);
 }
 
 /*
Nicolas Saenz Julienne March 24, 2022, 6:59 p.m. UTC | #15
Hi Mel,

On Thu, 2022-03-03 at 11:45 +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> For unrelated reasons I looked at using llist to avoid locks entirely. It
> turns out it's not possible and needs a lock. We know "local_locks to
> per-cpu spinlocks" took a large penalty so I considered alternatives on
> how a lock could be used.  I found it's possible to both remote drain
> the lists and avoid the disable/enable of IRQs entirely as long as a
> preempting IRQ is willing to take the zone lock instead (should be very
> rare). The IRQ part is a bit hairy though as softirqs are also a problem
> and preempt-rt needs different rules and the llist has to sort PCP
> refills which might be a loss in total. However, the remote draining may
> still be interesting. The full series is at
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mel/linux.git/ mm-pcpllist-v1r2
> 
> It's still waiting on tests to complete and not all the changelogs are
> complete which is why it's not posted.
> 
> This is a comparison of vanilla vs "local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks"
> versus the git series up to "mm/page_alloc: Remotely drain per-cpu lists"
> for the page faulting microbench I originally complained about.  The test
> machine is a 2-socket CascadeLake machine.
> 
> pft timings
>                                  5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5
>                                     vanilla    mm-remotedrain-v2r1       mm-pcpdrain-v1r1
> Amean     elapsed-1        32.54 (   0.00%)       33.08 *  -1.66%*       32.82 *  -0.86%*
> Amean     elapsed-4         8.66 (   0.00%)        9.24 *  -6.72%*        8.69 *  -0.38%*
> Amean     elapsed-7         5.02 (   0.00%)        5.43 *  -8.16%*        5.05 *  -0.55%*
> Amean     elapsed-12        3.07 (   0.00%)        3.38 * -10.00%*        3.09 *  -0.72%*
> Amean     elapsed-21        2.36 (   0.00%)        2.38 *  -0.89%*        2.19 *   7.39%*
> Amean     elapsed-30        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -6.50%*        1.62 *   7.59%*
> Amean     elapsed-48        1.71 (   0.00%)        2.00 * -17.32%*        1.71 (  -0.08%)
> Amean     elapsed-79        1.56 (   0.00%)        1.62 *  -3.84%*        1.56 (  -0.02%)
> Amean     elapsed-80        1.57 (   0.00%)        1.65 *  -5.31%*        1.57 (  -0.04%)
> 
> Note the local_lock conversion took 1 1-17% penalty while the git tree
> takes a negligile penalty while still allowing remote drains. It might
> have some potential while being less complex than the RCU approach.

I finally got some time to look at this and made some progress:

First, I belive your 'mm-remotedrain-v2r1' results are wrong/inflated due to a
bug in my series. Essentially, all 'this_cpu_ptr()' calls should've been
'raw_cpu_ptr()' and your build, which I bet enables CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT,
wasted time trowing warnings about per-cpu variable usage with preemption
enabled. Making the overall performance look worse than it actually is. My
build didn't enable it, which made me miss this whole issue. I'm sorry for the
noise and time wasted on such a silly thing. Note that the local_lock to
spin_lock conversion can handle the preeemption alright, it is part of the
design[1].

As for your idea of not disabling interrupts in the hot paths, it seems to
close the performance gap created by the lock conversion. That said, I'm not
sure I understand why you find the need to keep the local_locks around, not
only it casuses problems for RT systems, but IIUC they aren't really protecting
anything other than the 'this_cpu_ptr()' usage (which isn't really needed). I
rewrote your patch on top of my lock conversion series and I'm in the process
of testing it on multiple systems[2].

Let me know what you think.
Thanks!

[1] It follows this pattern:

	struct per_cpu_pages *pcp;

	pcp = raw_cpu_ptr(page_zone(page)->per_cpu_pageset);
	// <- Migration here is OK: spin_lock protects vs eventual pcplist
	// access from local CPU as long as all list access happens through the
	// pcp pointer.
	spin_lock(&pcp->lock);
	do_stuff_with_pcp_lists(pcp);
	spin_unlock(&pcp->lock);

[2] See:

  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/nsaenz/linux-rpi.git pcpdrain-sl-v3r1
Mel Gorman March 25, 2022, 10:48 a.m. UTC | #16
On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 07:59:56PM +0100, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> Hi Mel,
> 
> On Thu, 2022-03-03 at 11:45 +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > For unrelated reasons I looked at using llist to avoid locks entirely. It
> > turns out it's not possible and needs a lock. We know "local_locks to
> > per-cpu spinlocks" took a large penalty so I considered alternatives on
> > how a lock could be used.  I found it's possible to both remote drain
> > the lists and avoid the disable/enable of IRQs entirely as long as a
> > preempting IRQ is willing to take the zone lock instead (should be very
> > rare). The IRQ part is a bit hairy though as softirqs are also a problem
> > and preempt-rt needs different rules and the llist has to sort PCP
> > refills which might be a loss in total. However, the remote draining may
> > still be interesting. The full series is at
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mel/linux.git/ mm-pcpllist-v1r2
> > 
> > It's still waiting on tests to complete and not all the changelogs are
> > complete which is why it's not posted.
> > 
> > This is a comparison of vanilla vs "local_locks to per-cpu spinlocks"
> > versus the git series up to "mm/page_alloc: Remotely drain per-cpu lists"
> > for the page faulting microbench I originally complained about.  The test
> > machine is a 2-socket CascadeLake machine.
> > 
> > pft timings
> >                                  5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5             5.17.0-rc5
> >                                     vanilla    mm-remotedrain-v2r1       mm-pcpdrain-v1r1
> > Amean     elapsed-1        32.54 (   0.00%)       33.08 *  -1.66%*       32.82 *  -0.86%*
> > Amean     elapsed-4         8.66 (   0.00%)        9.24 *  -6.72%*        8.69 *  -0.38%*
> > Amean     elapsed-7         5.02 (   0.00%)        5.43 *  -8.16%*        5.05 *  -0.55%*
> > Amean     elapsed-12        3.07 (   0.00%)        3.38 * -10.00%*        3.09 *  -0.72%*
> > Amean     elapsed-21        2.36 (   0.00%)        2.38 *  -0.89%*        2.19 *   7.39%*
> > Amean     elapsed-30        1.75 (   0.00%)        1.87 *  -6.50%*        1.62 *   7.59%*
> > Amean     elapsed-48        1.71 (   0.00%)        2.00 * -17.32%*        1.71 (  -0.08%)
> > Amean     elapsed-79        1.56 (   0.00%)        1.62 *  -3.84%*        1.56 (  -0.02%)
> > Amean     elapsed-80        1.57 (   0.00%)        1.65 *  -5.31%*        1.57 (  -0.04%)
> > 
> > Note the local_lock conversion took 1 1-17% penalty while the git tree
> > takes a negligile penalty while still allowing remote drains. It might
> > have some potential while being less complex than the RCU approach.
> 
> I finally got some time to look at this and made some progress:
> 
> First, I belive your 'mm-remotedrain-v2r1' results are wrong/inflated due to a
> bug in my series. Essentially, all 'this_cpu_ptr()' calls should've been
> 'raw_cpu_ptr()' and your build, which I bet enables CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT,

I no longer have the logs but it could have and I didn't check the
dmesg at the time to see if there were warnings in it. It really should
add something to parse that log and automatically report if there are
unexpected warnings, oops or prove-locking warnings if enabled.

> wasted time trowing warnings about per-cpu variable usage with preemption
> enabled. Making the overall performance look worse than it actually is. My
> build didn't enable it, which made me miss this whole issue. I'm sorry for the
> noise and time wasted on such a silly thing. Note that the local_lock to
> spin_lock conversion can handle the preeemption alright, it is part of the
> design[1].
> 
> As for your idea of not disabling interrupts in the hot paths, it seems to
> close the performance gap created by the lock conversion. That said, I'm not
> sure I understand why you find the need to keep the local_locks around, not
> only it casuses problems for RT systems, but IIUC they aren't really protecting
> anything other than the 'this_cpu_ptr()' usage (which isn't really needed).

The local lock was preserved because something has to stabilise the per-cpu
pointer due to preemption and migration.  On !RT, that's a preempt_disable
and on RT it's a spinlock both which prevent a migration. The secondary
goal of using local lock was to allow some allocations to be done without
disabling IRQs at all with the penalty that an IRQ arriving in at the
wrong time will have to allocate directly from the buddy lists which
should be rare.

> I
> rewrote your patch on top of my lock conversion series and I'm in the process
> of testing it on multiple systems[2].
> 
> Let me know what you think.
> Thanks!
> 
> [1] It follows this pattern:
> 
> 	struct per_cpu_pages *pcp;
> 
> 	pcp = raw_cpu_ptr(page_zone(page)->per_cpu_pageset);
> 	// <- Migration here is OK: spin_lock protects vs eventual pcplist
> 	// access from local CPU as long as all list access happens through the
> 	// pcp pointer.
> 	spin_lock(&pcp->lock);
> 	do_stuff_with_pcp_lists(pcp);
> 	spin_unlock(&pcp->lock);
> 

And this was the part I am concerned with. We are accessing a PCP
structure that is not necessarily the one belonging to the CPU we
are currently running on. This type of pattern is warned about in
Documentation/locking/locktypes.rst

---8<---
A typical scenario is protection of per-CPU variables in thread context::

  struct foo *p = get_cpu_ptr(&var1);

  spin_lock(&p->lock);
  p->count += this_cpu_read(var2);

This is correct code on a non-PREEMPT_RT kernel, but on a PREEMPT_RT kernel
this breaks. The PREEMPT_RT-specific change of spinlock_t semantics does
not allow to acquire p->lock because get_cpu_ptr() implicitly disables
preemption. The following substitution works on both kernels::
---8<---

Now we don't explicitly have this pattern because there isn't an
obvious this_cpu_read() for example but it can accidentally happen for
counting. __count_zid_vm_events -> __count_vm_events -> raw_cpu_add is
an example although a harmless one.

Any of the mod_page_state ones are more problematic though because we
lock one PCP but potentially update the per-cpu pcp stats of another CPU
of a different PCP that we have not locked and those counters must be
accurate.

It *might* still be safe but it's subtle, it could be easily accidentally
broken in the future and it would be hard to detect because it would be
very slow corruption of VM counters like NR_FREE_PAGES that must be
accurate.
Nicolas Saenz Julienne March 28, 2022, 1:51 p.m. UTC | #17
Hi Mel,

On Fri, 2022-03-25 at 10:48 +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > [1] It follows this pattern:
> > 
> > 	struct per_cpu_pages *pcp;
> > 
> > 	pcp = raw_cpu_ptr(page_zone(page)->per_cpu_pageset);
> > 	// <- Migration here is OK: spin_lock protects vs eventual pcplist
> > 	// access from local CPU as long as all list access happens through the
> > 	// pcp pointer.
> > 	spin_lock(&pcp->lock);
> > 	do_stuff_with_pcp_lists(pcp);
> > 	spin_unlock(&pcp->lock);
> > 
> 
> And this was the part I am concerned with. We are accessing a PCP
> structure that is not necessarily the one belonging to the CPU we
> are currently running on. This type of pattern is warned about in
> Documentation/locking/locktypes.rst
> 
> ---8<---
> A typical scenario is protection of per-CPU variables in thread context::
> 
>   struct foo *p = get_cpu_ptr(&var1);
> 
>   spin_lock(&p->lock);
>   p->count += this_cpu_read(var2);
> 
> This is correct code on a non-PREEMPT_RT kernel, but on a PREEMPT_RT kernel
> this breaks. The PREEMPT_RT-specific change of spinlock_t semantics does
> not allow to acquire p->lock because get_cpu_ptr() implicitly disables
> preemption. The following substitution works on both kernels::
> ---8<---
> 
> Now we don't explicitly have this pattern because there isn't an
> obvious this_cpu_read() for example but it can accidentally happen for
> counting. __count_zid_vm_events -> __count_vm_events -> raw_cpu_add is
> an example although a harmless one.
> 
> Any of the mod_page_state ones are more problematic though because we
> lock one PCP but potentially update the per-cpu pcp stats of another CPU
> of a different PCP that we have not locked and those counters must be
> accurate.

But IIUC vmstats don't track pcplist usage (i.e. adding a page into the local
pcplist doesn't affect the count at all). It is only when interacting with the
buddy allocator that they get updated. It makes sense for the CPU that
adds/removes pages from the allocator to do the stat update, regardless of the
page's journey.

> It *might* still be safe but it's subtle, it could be easily accidentally
> broken in the future and it would be hard to detect because it would be
> very slow corruption of VM counters like NR_FREE_PAGES that must be
> accurate.

What does accurate mean here? vmstat consumers don't get accurate data, only
snapshots. And as I comment above you can't infer information about pcplist
usage from these stats. So, I see no real need for CPU locality when updating
them (which we're still retaining nonetheless, as per my comment above), the
only thing that is really needed is atomicity, achieved by disabling IRQs (and
preemption on RT). And this, even with your solution, is achieved through the
struct zone's spin_lock (plus a preempt_disable() in RT).

All in all, my point is that none of the stats are affected by the change, nor
have a dependency with the pcplists handling. And if we ever have the need to
pin vmstat updates to pcplist usage they should share the same pcp structure.
That said, I'm happy with either solution as long as we get remote pcplist
draining. So if still unconvinced, let me know how can I help. I have access to
all sorts of machines to validate perf results, time to review, or even to move
the series forward.

Thanks!
Mel Gorman March 29, 2022, 9:45 a.m. UTC | #18
On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 03:51:43PM +0200, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > Now we don't explicitly have this pattern because there isn't an
> > obvious this_cpu_read() for example but it can accidentally happen for
> > counting. __count_zid_vm_events -> __count_vm_events -> raw_cpu_add is
> > an example although a harmless one.
> > 
> > Any of the mod_page_state ones are more problematic though because we
> > lock one PCP but potentially update the per-cpu pcp stats of another CPU
> > of a different PCP that we have not locked and those counters must be
> > accurate.
> 
> But IIUC vmstats don't track pcplist usage (i.e. adding a page into the local
> pcplist doesn't affect the count at all). It is only when interacting with the
> buddy allocator that they get updated. It makes sense for the CPU that
> adds/removes pages from the allocator to do the stat update, regardless of the
> page's journey.
> 

It probably doesn't, I didn't audit it. As I said, it's subtle which is
why I'm wary of relying on accidental safety of getting a per-cpu pointer
that may not be stable. Even if it was ok *now*, I would worry that it
would break in the future. There already has been cases where patches
tried to move vmstats outside the appropriate locking accidentally.

> > It *might* still be safe but it's subtle, it could be easily accidentally
> > broken in the future and it would be hard to detect because it would be
> > very slow corruption of VM counters like NR_FREE_PAGES that must be
> > accurate.
> 
> What does accurate mean here? vmstat consumers don't get accurate data, only
> snapshots.

They are accurate in that they have "Eventual Consistency".
zone_page_state_snapshot exists to get a more accurate count but there is
always some drift but it still is accurate eventually. There is a clear
distinction between VM counters which can be inaccurate they are just to
assist debugging and vmstats like NR_FREE_PAGES that the kernel uses to
make decisions. It potentially gets very problematic if a per-cpu pointer
acquired from one zone gets migrated to another zone and the wrong vmstat
is updated. It *might* still be ok, I haven't audited it but if there is a
possible that two CPUs can be doing a RMW on one per-cpu vmstat structure,
it will corrupt and it'll be difficult to detect.

> And as I comment above you can't infer information about pcplist
> usage from these stats. So, I see no real need for CPU locality when updating
> them (which we're still retaining nonetheless, as per my comment above), the
> only thing that is really needed is atomicity, achieved by disabling IRQs (and
> preemption on RT). And this, even with your solution, is achieved through the
> struct zone's spin_lock (plus a preempt_disable() in RT).
> 

Yes, but under the series I had, I was using local_lock to stabilise what
CPU is being used before acquiring the per-cpu pointer. Strictly speaking,
it doesn't need a local_lock but the local_lock is clearer in terms of
what is being protected and it works with PROVE_LOCKING which already
caught a problematic softirq interaction for me when developing the series.

> All in all, my point is that none of the stats are affected by the change, nor
> have a dependency with the pcplists handling. And if we ever have the need to
> pin vmstat updates to pcplist usage they should share the same pcp structure.
> That said, I'm happy with either solution as long as we get remote pcplist
> draining. So if still unconvinced, let me know how can I help. I have access to
> all sorts of machines to validate perf results, time to review, or even to move
> the series forward.
> 

I also want the remote draining for PREEMPT_RT to avoid interference
of isolated CPUs due to workqueue activity but whatever the solution, I
would be happier if the per-cpu lock is acquired with the CPU stablised
and covers the scope of any vmstat delta updates stored in the per-cpu
structure.  The earliest I will be rebasing my series is 5.18-rc1 as I
see limited value in basing it on 5.17 aiming for a 5.19 merge window.