Re: [RFC 2/2] mm: alloc/free depth based PCP high auto-tuning

["Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>]

Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 08:55:16AM +0800, Huang, Ying wrote:
>> Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> writes:
>> 
>> > On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 05:16:11PM +0800, Huang, Ying wrote:
>> >> Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> writes:
>> >> 
>> >> > Batch should have a much lower maximum than high because it's a deferred cost
>> >> > that gets assigned to an arbitrary task. The worst case is where a process
>> >> > that is a light user of the allocator incurs the full cost of a refill/drain.
>> >> >
>> >> > Again, intuitively this may be PID Control problem for the "Mix" case
>> >> > to estimate the size of high required to minimise drains/allocs as each
>> >> > drain/alloc is potentially a lock contention. The catchall for corner
>> >> > cases would be to decay high from vmstat context based on pcp->expires. The
>> >> > decay would prevent the "high" being pinned at an artifically high value
>> >> > without any zone lock contention for prolonged periods of time and also
>> >> > mitigate worst-case due to state being per-cpu. The downside is that "high"
>> >> > would also oscillate for a continuous steady allocation pattern as the PID
>> >> > control might pick an ideal value suitable for a long period of time with
>> >> > the "decay" disrupting that ideal value.
>> >> 
>> >> Maybe we can track the minimal value of pcp->count.  If it's small
>> >> enough recently, we can avoid to decay pcp->high.  Because the pages in
>> >> PCP are used for allocations instead of idle.
>> >
>> > Implement as a separate patch. I suspect this type of heuristic will be
>> > very benchmark specific and the complexity may not be worth it in the
>> > general case.
>> 
>> OK.
>> 
>> >> Another question is as follows.
>> >> 
>> >> For example, on CPU A, a large number of pages are freed, and we
>> >> maximize batch and high.  So, a large number of pages are put in PCP.
>> >> Then, the possible situations may be,
>> >> 
>> >> a) a large number of pages are allocated on CPU A after some time
>> >> b) a large number of pages are allocated on another CPU B
>> >> 
>> >> For a), we want the pages are kept in PCP of CPU A as long as possible.
>> >> For b), we want the pages are kept in PCP of CPU A as short as possible.
>> >> I think that we need to balance between them.  What is the reasonable
>> >> time to keep pages in PCP without many allocations?
>> >> 
>> >
>> > This would be a case where you're relying on vmstat to drain the PCP after
>> > a period of time as it is a corner case.
>> 
>> Yes.  The remaining question is how long should "a period of time" be?
>
> Match the time used for draining "remote" pages from the PCP lists. The
> choice is arbitrary and no matter what value is chosen, it'll be possible
> to build an adverse workload.

OK.

>> If it's long, the pages in PCP can be used for allocation after some
>> time.  If it's short the pages can be put in buddy, so can be used by
>> other workloads if needed.
>> 
>
> Assume that the main reason to expire pages and put them back on the buddy
> list is to avoid premature allocation failures due to pages pinned on the
> PCP. Once pages are going back onto the buddy list and the expiry is hit,
> it might as well be assumed that the pages are cache-cold. Some bad corner
> cases should be mitigated by disabling the adapative sizing when reclaim is
> active.

Yes.  This can be mitigated, but the page allocation performance may be
hurt.

> The big remaaining corner case to watch out for is where the sum
> of the boosted pcp->high exceeds the low watermark.  If that should ever
> happen then potentially a premature OOM happens because the watermarks
> are fine so no reclaim is active but no pages are available. It may even
> be the case that the sum of pcp->high should not exceed *min* as that
> corner case means that processes may prematurely enter direct reclaim
> (not as bad as OOM but still bad).

Sorry, I don't understand this.  When pages are moved from buddy to PCP,
zone NR_FREE_PAGES will be decreased in rmqueue_bulk().  That is, pages
in PCP will be counted as used instead of free.  And, in
zone_watermark_ok*() and zone_watermark_fast(), zone NR_FREE_PAGES is
used to check watermark.  So, if my understanding were correct, if the
number of pages in PCP is larger than low/min watermark, we can still
trigger reclaim.  Whether is my understanding correct?

>> Anyway, I will do some experiment for that.
>> 
>> > You cannot reasonably detect the pattern on two separate per-cpu lists
>> > without either inspecting remote CPU state or maintaining global
>> > state. Either would incur cache miss penalties that probably cost more
>> > than the heuristic saves.
>> 
>> Yes.  Totally agree.

Best Regards,
Huang, Ying