Re: 08ed4efad6: stress-ng.sigsegv.ops_per_sec -41.9% regression

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@intel.com>
Cc: Alexey Gladkov <gladkov.alexey@gmail.com>,
	0day robot <lkp@intel.com>,  LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	lkp@lists.01.org,  "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>,
	Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>,
	zhengjun.xing@intel.com,
	 Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com>,
	 Linux Containers <containers@lists.linux-foundation.org>,
	Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	 Alexey Gladkov <legion@kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	 Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
	"Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
	 Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>,
	Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
	 Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: 08ed4efad6: stress-ng.sigsegv.ops_per_sec -41.9% regression
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 09:22:40 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wigPx+MMQMQ-7EA0pq5_5+kMCNV4qFsOss-WwdCSQmb-w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210408083026.GE1696@xsang-OptiPlex-9020>

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 1:32 AM kernel test robot <oliver.sang@intel.com> wrote:
>
> FYI, we noticed a -41.9% regression of stress-ng.sigsegv.ops_per_sec due to commit
> 08ed4efad684 ("[PATCH v10 6/9] Reimplement RLIMIT_SIGPENDING on top of ucounts")

Ouch.

I *think* this test may be testing "send so many signals that it
triggers the signal queue overflow case".

And I *think* that the performance degradation may be due to lots of
unnecessary allocations, because ity looks like that commit changes
__sigqueue_alloc() to do

        struct sigqueue *q = kmem_cache_alloc(sigqueue_cachep, flags);

*before* checking the signal limit, and then if the signal limit was
exceeded, it will just be free'd instead.

The old code would check the signal count against RLIMIT_SIGPENDING
*first*, and if there were m ore pending signals then it wouldn't do
anything at all (including not incrementing that expensive atomic
count).

Also, the old code was very careful to only do the "get_user()" for
the *first* signal it added to the queue, and do the "put_user()" for
when removing the last signal. Exactly because those atomics are very
expensive.

The new code just does a lot of these atomics unconditionally.

I dunno. The profile data in there is a bit hard to read, but there's
a lot more cachee misses, and a *lot* of node crossers:

>    5961544          +190.4%   17314361        perf-stat.i.cache-misses
>   22107466          +119.2%   48457656        perf-stat.i.cache-references
>     163292 ą  3%   +4582.0%    7645410        perf-stat.i.node-load-misses
>     227388 ą  2%   +3708.8%    8660824        perf-stat.i.node-loads

and (probably as a result) average instruction costs have gone up enormously:

>       3.47           +66.8%       5.79        perf-stat.overall.cpi
>      22849           -65.6%       7866        perf-stat.overall.cycles-between-cache-misses

and it does seem to be at least partly about "put_ucounts()":

>       0.00            +4.5        4.46        perf-profile.calltrace.cycles-pp.put_ucounts.__sigqueue_free.get_signal.arch_do_signal_or_restart.exit_to_user_mode_prepare

and a lot of "get_ucounts()".

But it may also be that the new "get sigpending" is just *so* much
more expensive than it used to be.

               Linus