Re: [PATCH v3 3/3] vfs: Use per-cpu list for superblock's inode list

[Waiman Long <waiman.long@hpe.com>]

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On 02/25/2016 03:06 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Jan Kara<jack@suse.cz>  wrote:
>
>>>>> With an exit microbenchmark that creates a large number of threads,
>>>>> attachs many inodes to them and then exits. The runtimes of that
>>>>> microbenchmark with 1000 threads before and after the patch on a 4-socket
>>>>> Intel E7-4820 v3 system (40 cores, 80 threads) were as follows:
>>>>>
>>>>>    Kernel            Elapsed Time    System Time
>>>>>    ------            ------------    -----------
>>>>>    Vanilla 4.5-rc4      65.29s         82m14s
>>>>>    Patched 4.5-rc4      22.81s         23m03s
>>>>>
>>>>> Before the patch, spinlock contention at the inode_sb_list_add() function
>>>>> at the startup phase and the inode_sb_list_del() function at the exit
>>>>> phase were about 79% and 93% of total CPU time respectively (as measured
>>>>> by perf). After the patch, the percpu_list_add() function consumed only
>>>>> about 0.04% of CPU time at startup phase. The percpu_list_del() function
>>>>> consumed about 0.4% of CPU time at exit phase. There were still some
>>>>> spinlock contention, but they happened elsewhere.
>>>> While looking through this patch, I have noticed that the
>>>> list_for_each_entry_safe() iterations in evict_inodes() and
>>>> invalidate_inodes() are actually unnecessary. So if you first apply the
>>>> attached patch, you don't have to implement safe iteration variants at all.
>>>>
>>>> As a second comment, I'd note that this patch grows struct inode by 1
>>>> pointer. It is probably acceptable for large machines given the speedup but
>>>> it should be noted in the changelog. Furthermore for UP or even small SMP
>>>> systems this is IMHO undesired bloat since the speedup won't be noticeable.
>>>>
>>>> So for these small systems it would be good if per-cpu list magic would just
>>>> fall back to single linked list with a spinlock. Do you think that is
>>>> reasonably doable?
>>> Even many 'small' systems tend to be SMP these days.
>> Yes, I know. But my tablet with 4 ARM cores is unlikely to benefit from this
>> change either. [...]
> I'm not sure about that at all, the above numbers are showing a 3x-4x speedup in
> system time, which ought to be noticeable on smaller SMP systems as well.
>
> Waiman, could you please post the microbenchmark?
>
> Thanks,
>
> 	Ingo

The microbenchmark that I used is attached.

I do agree that performance benefit will decrease as the number of CPUs 
get smaller. The system that I used for testing have 4 sockets with 40 
cores (80 threads). Dave Chinner had run his fstests on a 16-core system 
(probably 2-socket) which showed modest improvement in performance 
(~4m40s vs 4m30s in runtime).

This patch enables parallel insertion and deletion to/from the inode 
list which used to be a serialized operation. So if that list operation 
is a bottleneck, you will see significant improvement. If it is not, we 
may not notice that much of a difference. For a single-socket 4-core 
system, I agree that the performance benefit, if any, will be limited.

Cheers,
Longman


[-- Attachment #2: exit_test.c --]
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/*
 * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 * Authors: Waiman Long <waiman.long@hp.com>
 */
/*
 * This is an exit test
 */
#include <ctype.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/syscall.h>


#define do_exit()	syscall(SYS_exit)
#define	gettid()	syscall(SYS_gettid)
#define	MAX_THREADS	2048

static inline void cpu_relax(void)
{
        __asm__ __volatile__("rep;nop": : :"memory");
}

static inline void atomic_inc(volatile int *v)
{
	__asm__ __volatile__("lock incl %0": "+m" (*v));
}

static volatile int exit_now  = 0;
static volatile int threadcnt = 0;

/*
 * Walk the /proc/<pid> filesystem to make them fill the dentry cache
 */
static void walk_procfs(void)
{
	char cmdbuf[256];
	pid_t tid = gettid();

	snprintf(cmdbuf, sizeof(cmdbuf), "find /proc/%d > /dev/null 2>&1", tid);
	if (system(cmdbuf) < 0)
		perror("system() failed!");
}

static void *exit_thread(void *dummy)
{
	long tid = (long)dummy;

	walk_procfs();
	atomic_inc(&threadcnt);
	/*
	 * Busy wait until the do_exit flag is set and then call exit
	 */
	while (!exit_now)
		sleep(1);
	do_exit();
}

static void exit_test(int threads)
{
	pthread_t thread[threads];
	long i = 0, finish;
	time_t start = time(NULL);

	while (i++ < threads) {
		if (pthread_create(thread + i - 1, NULL, exit_thread,
				  (void *)i)) {
			perror("pthread_create");
			exit(1);
		}
#if 0
		/*
		 * Pipelining to reduce contention & improve speed
		 */
		if ((i & 0xf) == 0)
			 while (i - threadcnt > 12)
				usleep(1);
#endif
	}
	while (threadcnt != threads)
		usleep(1);
	walk_procfs();
	printf("Setup time = %lus\n", time(NULL) - start);
	printf("Process ready to exit!\n");
	kill(0, SIGKILL);
	exit(0);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	int   tcnt;	/* Thread counts */
	char *cmd = argv[0];

	if ((argc != 2) || !isdigit(argv[1][0])) {
		fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <thread count>\n", cmd);
		exit(1);
	}
	tcnt = strtoul(argv[1], NULL, 10);
	if (tcnt > MAX_THREADS) {
		fprintf(stderr, "Error: thread count should be <= %d\n",
			MAX_THREADS);
		exit(1);
	}
	exit_test(tcnt);
	return 0;	/* Not reaachable */
}