From: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
To: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>,
Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
"Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>,
Yin Fengwei <fengwei.yin@intel.com>, Yu Zhao <yuzhao@google.com>,
Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@arm.com>,
Yang Shi <shy828301@gmail.com>,
linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 4/5] mm: FLEXIBLE_THP for improved performance
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2023 18:06:20 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <a8fed7f8-d285-4628-da4b-0ff82c19c582@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <9dd036a8-9ba3-0cc4-b791-cb3178237728@arm.com>
On 07.07.23 17:13, Ryan Roberts wrote:
> On 07/07/2023 15:07, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 07.07.23 15:57, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jul 07, 2023 at 01:29:02PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> On 07.07.23 11:52, Ryan Roberts wrote:
>>>>> On 07/07/2023 09:01, Huang, Ying wrote:
>>>>>> Although we can use smaller page order for FLEXIBLE_THP, it's hard to
>>>>>> avoid internal fragmentation completely. So, I think that finally we
>>>>>> will need to provide a mechanism for the users to opt out, e.g.,
>>>>>> something like "always madvise never" via
>>>>>> /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled. I'm not sure whether it's
>>>>>> a good idea to reuse the existing interface of THP.
>>>>>
>>>>> I wouldn't want to tie this to the existing interface, simply because that
>>>>> implies that we would want to follow the "always" and "madvise" advice too;
>>>>> That
>>>>> means that on a thp=madvise system (which is certainly the case for android and
>>>>> other client systems) we would have to disable large anon folios for VMAs that
>>>>> haven't explicitly opted in. That breaks the intention that this should be an
>>>>> invisible performance boost. I think it's important to set the policy for
>>>>> use of
>>>>
>>>> It will never ever be a completely invisible performance boost, just like
>>>> ordinary THP.
>>>>
>>>> Using the exact same existing toggle is the right thing to do. If someone
>>>> specify "never" or "madvise", then do exactly that.
>>>>
>>>> It might make sense to have more modes or additional toggles, but
>>>> "madvise=never" means no memory waste.
>>>
>>> I hate the existing mechanisms. They are an abdication of our
>>> responsibility, and an attempt to blame the user (be it the sysadmin
>>> or the programmer) of our code for using it wrongly. We should not
>>> replicate this mistake.
>>
>> I don't agree regarding the programmer responsibility. In some cases the
>> programmer really doesn't want to get more memory populated than requested --
>> and knows exactly why setting MADV_NOHUGEPAGE is the right thing to do.
>>
>> Regarding the madvise=never/madvise/always (sys admin decision), memory waste
>> (and nailing down bugs or working around them in customer setups) have been very
>> good reasons to let the admin have a word.
>>
>>>
>>> Our code should be auto-tuning. I posted a long, detailed outline here:
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/Y%2FU8bQd15aUO97vS@casper.infradead.org/
>>>
>>
>> Well, "auto-tuning" also should be perfect for everybody, but once reality
>> strikes you know it isn't.
>>
>> If people don't feel like using THP, let them have a word. The "madvise" config
>> option is probably more controversial. But the "always vs. never" absolutely
>> makes sense to me.
>>
>>>> I remember I raised it already in the past, but you *absolutely* have to
>>>> respect the MADV_NOHUGEPAGE flag. There is user space out there (for
>>>> example, userfaultfd) that doesn't want the kernel to populate any
>>>> additional page tables. So if you have to respect that already, then also
>>>> respect MADV_HUGEPAGE, simple.
>>>
>>> Possibly having uffd enabled on a VMA should disable using large folios,
>>
>> There are cases where we enable uffd *after* already touching memory (postcopy
>> live migration in QEMU being the famous example). That doesn't fly.
>>
>>> I can get behind that. But the notion that userspace knows what it's
>>> doing ... hahaha. Just ignore the madvise flags. Userspace doesn't
>>> know what it's doing.
>>
>> If user space sets MADV_NOHUGEPAGE, it exactly knows what it is doing ... in
>> some cases. And these include cases I care about messing with sparse VM memory :)
>>
>> I have strong opinions against populating more than required when user space set
>> MADV_NOHUGEPAGE.
>
> I can see your point about honouring MADV_NOHUGEPAGE, so think that it is
> reasonable to fallback to allocating an order-0 page in a VMA that has it set.
> The app has gone out of its way to explicitly set it, after all.
>
> I think the correct behaviour for the global thp controls (cmdline and sysfs)
> are less obvious though. I could get on board with disabling large anon folios
> globally when thp="never". But for other situations, I would prefer to keep
> large anon folios enabled (treat "madvise" as "always"), with the argument that
> their order is much smaller than traditional THP and therefore the internal
> fragmentation is significantly reduced. I really don't want to end up with user
> space ever having to opt-in (with MADV_HUGEPAGE) to see the benefits of large
> anon folios.
I was briefly playing with a nasty idea of an additional "madvise-pmd"
option (that could be the new default), that would use PMD THP only in
madvise'd regions, and ordinary everywhere else. But let's disregard
that for now. I think there is a bigger issue (below).
>
> I still feel that it would be better for the thp and large anon folio controls
> to be independent though - what's the argument for tying them together?
Thinking about desired 2 MiB flexible THP on aarch64 (64k kernel) vs, 2
MiB PMD THP on aarch64 (4k kernel), how are they any different? Just the
way they are mapped ...
It's easy to say "64k vs. 2 MiB" is a difference and we want separate
controls, but how is "2MiB vs. 2 MiB" different?
Having that said, I think we have to make up our mind how much control
we want to give user space. Again, the "2MiB vs. 2 MiB" case nicely
shows that it's not trivial: memory waste is a real issue on some
systems where we limit THP to madvise().
Just throwing it out for discussing:
What about keeping the "all / madvise / never" semantics (and
MADV_NOHUGEPAGE ...) but having an additional config knob that specifies
in which cases we *still* allow flexible THP even though the system was
configured for "madvise".
I can't come up with a good name for that, but something like
"max_auto_size=64k" could be something reasonable to set. We could have
an arch+hw specific default.
(we all hate config options, I know, but I think there are good reasons
to have such bare-minimum ones)
--
Cheers,
David / dhildenb
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-07-07 16:08 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 84+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-07-03 13:53 [PATCH v2 0/5] variable-order, large folios for anonymous memory Ryan Roberts
2023-07-03 13:53 ` [PATCH v2 1/5] mm: Non-pmd-mappable, large folios for folio_add_new_anon_rmap() Ryan Roberts
2023-07-03 19:05 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 2:13 ` Yin, Fengwei
2023-07-04 11:19 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-04 2:14 ` Yin, Fengwei
2023-07-03 13:53 ` [PATCH v2 2/5] mm: Allow deferred splitting of arbitrary large anon folios Ryan Roberts
2023-07-07 8:21 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-07 9:42 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-10 5:37 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-10 8:29 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-10 9:01 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-10 9:39 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-11 1:56 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-03 13:53 ` [PATCH v2 3/5] mm: Default implementation of arch_wants_pte_order() Ryan Roberts
2023-07-03 19:50 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 13:20 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-05 2:07 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-05 9:11 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-05 17:24 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-05 18:01 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-06 19:33 ` Matthew Wilcox
2023-07-07 10:00 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-04 2:22 ` Yin, Fengwei
2023-07-04 3:02 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 3:59 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 5:22 ` Yin, Fengwei
2023-07-04 5:42 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 12:36 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-04 13:23 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-05 1:40 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-05 1:23 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-05 2:18 ` Yin Fengwei
2023-07-03 13:53 ` [PATCH v2 4/5] mm: FLEXIBLE_THP for improved performance Ryan Roberts
2023-07-03 15:51 ` kernel test robot
2023-07-03 16:01 ` kernel test robot
2023-07-04 1:35 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 14:08 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-04 23:47 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 3:45 ` Yin, Fengwei
2023-07-04 14:20 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-04 23:35 ` Yin Fengwei
2023-07-04 23:57 ` Matthew Wilcox
2023-07-05 9:54 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-05 12:08 ` Matthew Wilcox
2023-07-07 8:01 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-07 9:52 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-07 11:29 ` David Hildenbrand
2023-07-07 13:57 ` Matthew Wilcox
2023-07-07 14:07 ` David Hildenbrand
2023-07-07 15:13 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-07 16:06 ` David Hildenbrand [this message]
2023-07-07 16:22 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-07 19:06 ` David Hildenbrand
2023-07-10 8:41 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-10 3:03 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-10 8:55 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-10 9:18 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-10 9:25 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-11 0:48 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-10 2:49 ` Huang, Ying
2023-07-03 13:53 ` [PATCH v2 5/5] arm64: mm: Override arch_wants_pte_order() Ryan Roberts
2023-07-03 20:02 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 2:18 ` [PATCH v2 0/5] variable-order, large folios for anonymous memory Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 6:22 ` Yin, Fengwei
2023-07-04 7:11 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-04 15:36 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-04 23:52 ` Yin Fengwei
2023-07-05 0:21 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-05 10:16 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-05 19:00 ` Yu Zhao
2023-07-05 19:38 ` David Hildenbrand
2023-07-06 8:02 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-07 11:40 ` David Hildenbrand
2023-07-07 13:12 ` Matthew Wilcox
2023-07-07 13:24 ` David Hildenbrand
2023-07-10 10:07 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-10 16:57 ` Matthew Wilcox
2023-07-10 16:53 ` Zi Yan
2023-07-19 15:49 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-19 16:05 ` Zi Yan
2023-07-19 18:37 ` Ryan Roberts
2023-07-11 21:11 ` Luis Chamberlain
2023-07-11 21:59 ` Matthew Wilcox
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