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* NUMA API for Linux
@ 2004-04-06 13:33 Andi Kleen
  2004-04-06 13:34 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 1/ Core NUMA API code Andi Kleen
                   ` (11 more replies)
  0 siblings, 12 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Andi Kleen @ 2004-04-06 13:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-kernel; +Cc: akpm


The following patches add support for configurable NUMA memory policy
for user processes. It is based on the proposal from last kernel summit
with feedback from various people.

This NUMA API doesn't not attempt to implement page migration or anything
else complicated: all it does is to police the allocation when a page 
is first allocation or when a page is reallocated after swapping. Currently
only support for shared memory and anonymous memory is there; policy for 
file based mappings is not implemented yet (although they get implicitely
policied by the default process policy)

It adds three new system calls: mbind to change the policy of a VMA,
set_mempolicy to change the policy of a process, get_mempolicy to retrieve
memory policy. User tools (numactl, libnuma, test programs, manpages) can be 
found in  ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/ak/numa/numactl-0.6.tar.gz

For details on the system calls see the manpages
http://www.firstfloor.org/~andi/mbind.html
http://www.firstfloor.org/~andi/set_mempolicy.html
http://www.firstfloor.org/~andi/get_mempolicy.html
Most user programs should actually not use the system calls directly,
but use the higher level functions in libnuma 
(http://www.firstfloor.org/~andi/numa.html) or the command line tools
(http://www.firstfloor.org/~andi/numactl.html

The system calls allow user programs and administors to set various NUMA memory 
policies for putting memory on specific nodes. Here is a short description
of the policies copied from the kernel patch:

 * NUMA policy allows the user to give hints in which node(s) memory should
 * be allocated.
 *
 * Support four policies per VMA and per process:
 *
 * The VMA policy has priority over the process policy for a page fault.
 *
 * interleave     Allocate memory interleaved over a set of nodes,
 *                with normal fallback if it fails.
 *                For VMA based allocations this interleaves based on the
 *                offset into the backing object or offset into the mapping
 *                for anonymous memory. For process policy an process counter
 *                is used.
 * bind           Only allocate memory on a specific set of nodes,
 *                no fallback.
 * preferred      Try a specific node first before normal fallback.
 *                As a special case node -1 here means do the allocation
 *                on the local CPU. This is normally identical to default,
 *                but useful to set in a VMA when you have a non default
 *                process policy.
 * default        Allocate on the local node first, or when on a VMA
 *                use the process policy. This is what Linux always did
 *                in a NUMA aware kernel and still does by, ahem, default.
 *
 * The process policy is applied for most non interrupt memory allocations
 * in that process' context. Interrupts ignore the policies and always
 * try to allocate on the local CPU. The VMA policy is only applied for memory
 * allocations for a VMA in the VM.
 *
 * Currently there are a few corner cases in swapping where the policy
 * is not applied, but the majority should be handled. When process policy
 * is used it is not remembered over swap outs/swap ins.
 *
 * Only the highest zone in the zone hierarchy gets policied. Allocations
 * requesting a lower zone just use default policy. This implies that
 * on systems with highmem kernel lowmem allocation don't get policied.
 * Same with GFP_DMA allocations.
 *
 * For shmfs/tmpfs/hugetlbfs shared memory the policy is shared between
 * all users and remembered even when nobody has memory mapped.

The following patches implement all this. 

I think these patches are ready for merging in -mm*.

-Andi

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2004-05-06  6:01 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2004-04-06 13:33 NUMA API for Linux Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:34 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 1/ Core NUMA API code Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:35 ` NUMA API for Linux 2/ Add x86-64 support Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:35 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 3/ Add i386 support Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 23:23   ` Andrew Morton
2004-04-06 13:36 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 4/ Add IA64 support Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:37 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 5/ Add VMA hooks for policy Andi Kleen
2004-05-05 16:05   ` Paul Jackson
2004-05-05 16:39     ` Andi Kleen
2004-05-05 16:47       ` Paul Jackson
2004-05-06  6:00         ` Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:37 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 6/ Add shared memory support Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:38 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 7/ Add statistics Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:39 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 8/ Add policy support to anonymous memory Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:40 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 9/ Add simple lazy i386/x86-64 hugetlbfs policy support Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 13:40 ` [PATCH] NUMA API for Linux 10/ Bitmap bugfix Andi Kleen
2004-04-06 23:35 ` NUMA API for Linux Paul Jackson
2004-04-08 20:12 ` Pavel Machek

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