Re: [PATCH v3 08/13] mm, compaction: remember position within pageblock in free pages scanner

[Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 05:49:38PM +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> Unlike the migration scanner, the free scanner remembers the beginning of the
> last scanned pageblock in cc->free_pfn. It might be therefore rescanning pages
> uselessly when called several times during single compaction. This might have
> been useful when pages were returned to the buddy allocator after a failed
> migration, but this is no longer the case.
> 
> This patch changes the meaning of cc->free_pfn so that if it points to a
> middle of a pageblock, that pageblock is scanned only from cc->free_pfn to the
> end. isolate_freepages_block() will record the pfn of the last page it looked
> at, which is then used to update cc->free_pfn.
> 
> In the mmtests stress-highalloc benchmark, this has resulted in lowering the
> ratio between pages scanned by both scanners, from 2.5 free pages per migrate
> page, to 2.25 free pages per migrate page, without affecting success rates.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>

-- 
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim