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2006-09-01[PATCH] ZVC: Scale thresholds depending on the size of the systemChristoph Lameter
The ZVC counter update threshold is currently set to a fixed value of 32. This patch sets up the threshold depending on the number of processors and the sizes of the zones in the system. With the current threshold of 32, I was able to observe slight contention when more than 130-140 processors concurrently updated the counters. The contention vanished when I either increased the threshold to 64 or used Andrew's idea of overstepping the interval (see ZVC overstep patch). However, we saw contention again at 220-230 processors. So we need higher values for larger systems. But the current default is already a bit of an overkill for smaller systems. Some systems have tiny zones where precision matters. For example i386 and x86_64 have 16M DMA zones and either 900M ZONE_NORMAL or ZONE_DMA32. These are even present on SMP and NUMA systems. The patch here sets up a threshold based on the number of processors in the system and the size of the zone that these counters are used for. The threshold should grow logarithmically, so we use fls() as an easy approximation. Results of tests on a system with 1024 processors (4TB RAM) The following output is from a test allocating 1GB of memory concurrently on each processor (Forking the process. So contention on mmap_sem and the pte locks is not a factor): X MIN TYPE: CPUS WALL WALL SYS USER TOTCPU fork 1 0.552 0.552 0.540 0.012 0.552 fork 4 0.552 0.548 2.164 0.036 2.200 fork 16 0.564 0.548 8.812 0.164 8.976 fork 128 0.580 0.572 72.204 1.208 73.412 fork 256 1.300 0.660 310.400 2.160 312.560 fork 512 3.512 0.696 1526.836 4.816 1531.652 fork 1020 20.024 0.700 17243.176 6.688 17249.863 So a threshold of 32 is fine up to 128 processors. At 256 processors contention becomes a factor. Overstepping the counter (earlier patch) improves the numbers a bit: fork 4 0.552 0.548 2.164 0.040 2.204 fork 16 0.552 0.548 8.640 0.148 8.788 fork 128 0.556 0.548 69.676 0.956 70.632 fork 256 0.876 0.636 212.468 2.108 214.576 fork 512 2.276 0.672 997.324 4.260 1001.584 fork 1020 13.564 0.680 11586.436 6.088 11592.523 Still contention at 512 and 1020. Contention at 1020 is down by a third. 256 still has a slight bit of contention. After this patch the counter threshold will be set to 125 which reduces contention significantly: fork 128 0.560 0.548 69.776 0.932 70.708 fork 256 0.636 0.556 143.460 2.036 145.496 fork 512 0.640 0.548 284.244 4.236 288.480 fork 1020 1.500 0.588 1326.152 8.892 1335.044 [akpm@osdl.org: !SMP build fix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-01[PATCH] ZVC: Overstep countersChristoph Lameter
Increments and decrements are usually grouped rather than mixed. We can optimize the inc and dec functions for that case. Increment and decrement the counters by 50% more than the threshold in those cases and set the differential accordingly. This decreases the need to update the atomic counters. The idea came originally from Andrew Morton. The overstepping alone was sufficient to address the contention issue found when updating the global and the per zone counters from 160 processors. Also remove some code in dec_zone_page_state. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-07-10[PATCH] vmstat: export all_vm_events()Heiko Carstens
Add missing EXPORT_SYMBOL for all_vm_events(). Git commit f8891e5e1f93a128c3900f82035e8541357896a7 caused this: Building modules, stage 2. MODPOST WARNING: "all_vm_events" [arch/s390/appldata/appldata_mem.ko] undefined! CC arch/s390/appldata/appldata_mem.mod.o Cc: Christoph Lameter <christoph@lameter.com> Cc: Gerald Schaefer <geraldsc@de.ibm.com> Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] Light weight event countersChristoph Lameter
The remaining counters in page_state after the zoned VM counter patches have been applied are all just for show in /proc/vmstat. They have no essential function for the VM. We use a simple increment of per cpu variables. In order to avoid the most severe races we disable preempt. Preempt does not prevent the race between an increment and an interrupt handler incrementing the same statistics counter. However, that race is exceedingly rare, we may only loose one increment or so and there is no requirement (at least not in kernel) that the vm event counters have to be accurate. In the non preempt case this results in a simple increment for each counter. For many architectures this will be reduced by the compiler to a single instruction. This single instruction is atomic for i386 and x86_64. And therefore even the rare race condition in an interrupt is avoided for both architectures in most cases. The patchset also adds an off switch for embedded systems that allows a building of linux kernels without these counters. The implementation of these counters is through inline code that hopefully results in only a single instruction increment instruction being emitted (i386, x86_64) or in the increment being hidden though instruction concurrency (EPIC architectures such as ia64 can get that done). Benefits: - VM event counter operations usually reduce to a single inline instruction on i386 and x86_64. - No interrupt disable, only preempt disable for the preempt case. Preempt disable can also be avoided by moving the counter into a spinlock. - Handling is similar to zoned VM counters. - Simple and easily extendable. - Can be omitted to reduce memory use for embedded use. References: RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113512330605497&w=2 RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114988082814934&w=2 local_t http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114991748606690&w=2 V2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=115014808400007&r=1&w=2 V3 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115024767022346&w=2 V4 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115047968808926&w=2 Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] Use Zoned VM Counters for NUMA statisticsChristoph Lameter
The numa statistics are really event counters. But they are per node and so we have had special treatment for these counters through additional fields on the pcp structure. We can now use the per zone nature of the zoned VM counters to realize these. This will shrink the size of the pcp structure on NUMA systems. We will have some room to add additional per zone counters that will all still fit in the same cacheline. Bits Prior pcp size Size after patch We can add ------------------------------------------------------------------ 64 128 bytes (16 words) 80 bytes (10 words) 48 32 76 bytes (19 words) 56 bytes (14 words) 8 (64 byte cacheline) 72 (128 byte) Remove the special statistics for numa and replace them with zoned vm counters. This has the side effect that global sums of these events now show up in /proc/vmstat. Also take the opportunity to move the zone_statistics() function from page_alloc.c into vmstat.c. Discussions: V2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=115048227000002&r=1&w=2 Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Acked-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned-vm-counters: remove read_page_state()Andrew Morton
No callers. Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_bounce to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
Conversion of nr_bounce to a per zone counter nr_bounce is only used for proc output. So it could be left as an event counter. However, the event counters may not be accurate and nr_bounce is categorizing types of pages in a zone. So we really need this to also be a per zone counter. [akpm@osdl.org: bugfix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_unstable to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
Conversion of nr_unstable to a per zone counter We need to do some special modifications to the nfs code since there are multiple cases of disposition and we need to have a page ref for proper accounting. This converts the last critical page state of the VM and therefore we need to remove several functions that were depending on GET_PAGE_STATE_LAST in order to make the kernel compile again. We are only left with event type counters in page state. [akpm@osdl.org: bugfixes] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_writeback to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
Conversion of nr_writeback to per zone counter. This removes the last page_state counter from arch/i386/mm/pgtable.c so we drop the page_state from there. [akpm@osdl.org: bugfix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_dirty to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
This makes nr_dirty a per zone counter. Looping over all processors is avoided during writeback state determination. The counter aggregation for nr_dirty had to be undone in the NFS layer since we summed up the page counts from multiple zones. Someone more familiar with NFS should probably review what I have done. [akpm@osdl.org: bugfix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_pagetables to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
Conversion of nr_page_table_pages to a per zone counter [akpm@osdl.org: bugfix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_slab to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
- Allows reclaim to access counter without looping over processor counts. - Allows accurate statistics on how many pages are used in a zone by the slab. This may become useful to balance slab allocations over various zones. [akpm@osdl.org: bugfix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: split NR_ANON_PAGES off from NR_FILE_MAPPEDChristoph Lameter
The current NR_FILE_MAPPED is used by zone reclaim and the dirty load calculation as the number of mapped pagecache pages. However, that is not true. NR_FILE_MAPPED includes the mapped anonymous pages. This patch separates those and therefore allows an accurate tracking of the anonymous pages per zone. It then becomes possible to determine the number of unmapped pages per zone and we can avoid scanning for unmapped pages if there are none. Also it may now be possible to determine the mapped/unmapped ratio in get_dirty_limit. Isnt the number of anonymous pages irrelevant in that calculation? Note that this will change the meaning of the number of mapped pages reported in /proc/vmstat /proc/meminfo and in the per node statistics. This may affect user space tools that monitor these counters! NR_FILE_MAPPED works like NR_FILE_DIRTY. It is only valid for pagecache pages. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_pagecache to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
Currently a single atomic variable is used to establish the size of the page cache in the whole machine. The zoned VM counters have the same method of implementation as the nr_pagecache code but also allow the determination of the pagecache size per zone. Remove the special implementation for nr_pagecache and make it a zoned counter named NR_FILE_PAGES. Updates of the page cache counters are always performed with interrupts off. We can therefore use the __ variant here. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: convert nr_mapped to per zone counterChristoph Lameter
nr_mapped is important because it allows a determination of how many pages of a zone are not mapped, which would allow a more efficient means of determining when we need to reclaim memory in a zone. We take the nr_mapped field out of the page state structure and define a new per zone counter named NR_FILE_MAPPED (the anonymous pages will be split off from NR_MAPPED in the next patch). We replace the use of nr_mapped in various kernel locations. This avoids the looping over all processors in try_to_free_pages(), writeback, reclaim (swap + zone reclaim). [akpm@osdl.org: bugfix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: basic ZVC (zoned vm counter) implementationChristoph Lameter
Per zone counter infrastructure The counters that we currently have for the VM are split per processor. The processor however has not much to do with the zone these pages belong to. We cannot tell f.e. how many ZONE_DMA pages are dirty. So we are blind to potentially inbalances in the usage of memory in various zones. F.e. in a NUMA system we cannot tell how many pages are dirty on a particular node. If we knew then we could put measures into the VM to balance the use of memory between different zones and different nodes in a NUMA system. For example it would be possible to limit the dirty pages per node so that fast local memory is kept available even if a process is dirtying huge amounts of pages. Another example is zone reclaim. We do not know how many unmapped pages exist per zone. So we just have to try to reclaim. If it is not working then we pause and try again later. It would be better if we knew when it makes sense to reclaim unmapped pages from a zone. This patchset allows the determination of the number of unmapped pages per zone. We can remove the zone reclaim interval with the counters introduced here. Futhermore the ability to have various usage statistics available will allow the development of new NUMA balancing algorithms that may be able to improve the decision making in the scheduler of when to move a process to another node and hopefully will also enable automatic page migration through a user space program that can analyse the memory load distribution and then rebalance memory use in order to increase performance. The counter framework here implements differential counters for each processor in struct zone. The differential counters are consolidated when a threshold is exceeded (like done in the current implementation for nr_pageache), when slab reaping occurs or when a consolidation function is called. Consolidation uses atomic operations and accumulates counters per zone in the zone structure and also globally in the vm_stat array. VM functions can access the counts by simply indexing a global or zone specific array. The arrangement of counters in an array also simplifies processing when output has to be generated for /proc/*. Counters can be updated by calling inc/dec_zone_page_state or _inc/dec_zone_page_state analogous to *_page_state. The second group of functions can be called if it is known that interrupts are disabled. Special optimized increment and decrement functions are provided. These can avoid certain checks and use increment or decrement instructions that an architecture may provide. We also add a new CONFIG_DMA_IS_NORMAL that signifies that an architecture can do DMA to all memory and therefore ZONE_NORMAL will not be populated. This is only currently set for IA64 SGI SN2 and currently only affects node_page_state(). In the best case node_page_state can be reduced to retrieving a single counter for the one zone on the node. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups] [akpm@osdl.org: export vm_stat[] for filesystems] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30[PATCH] zoned vm counters: create vmstat.c/.h from page_alloc.c/.hChristoph Lameter
NOTE: ZVC are *not* the lightweight event counters. ZVCs are reliable whereas event counters do not need to be. Zone based VM statistics are necessary to be able to determine what the state of memory in one zone is. In a NUMA system this can be helpful for local reclaim and other memory optimizations that may be able to shift VM load in order to get more balanced memory use. It is also useful to know how the computing load affects the memory allocations on various zones. This patchset allows the retrieval of that data from userspace. The patchset introduces a framework for counters that is a cross between the existing page_stats --which are simply global counters split per cpu-- and the approach of deferred incremental updates implemented for nr_pagecache. Small per cpu 8 bit counters are added to struct zone. If the counter exceeds certain thresholds then the counters are accumulated in an array of atomic_long in the zone and in a global array that sums up all zone values. The small 8 bit counters are next to the per cpu page pointers and so they will be in high in the cpu cache when pages are allocated and freed. Access to VM counter information for a zone and for the whole machine is then possible by simply indexing an array (Thanks to Nick Piggin for pointing out that approach). The access to the total number of pages of various types does no longer require the summing up of all per cpu counters. Benefits of this patchset right now: - Ability for UP and SMP configuration to determine how memory is balanced between the DMA, NORMAL and HIGHMEM zones. - loops over all processors are avoided in writeback and reclaim paths. We can avoid caching the writeback information because the needed information is directly accessible. - Special handling for nr_pagecache removed. - zone_reclaim_interval vanishes since VM stats can now determine when it is worth to do local reclaim. - Fast inline per node page state determination. - Accurate counters in /sys/devices/system/node/node*/meminfo. Current counters are counting simply which processor allocated a page somewhere and guestimate based on that. So the counters were not useful to show the actual distribution of page use on a specific zone. - The swap_prefetch patch requires per node statistics in order to figure out when processors of a node can prefetch. This patch provides some of the needed numbers. - Detailed VM counters available in more /proc and /sys status files. References to earlier discussions: V1 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113511649910826&w=2 V2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114980851924230&w=2 V3 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115014697910351&w=2 V4 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115024767318740&w=2 Performance tests with AIM7 did not show any regressions. Seems to be a tad faster even. Tested on ia64/NUMA. Builds fine on i386, SMP / UP. Includes fixes for s390/arm/uml arch code. This patch: Move counter code from page_alloc.c/page-flags.h to vmstat.c/h. Create vmstat.c/vmstat.h by separating the counter code and the proc functions. Move the vm_stat_text array before zoneinfo_show. [akpm@osdl.org: s390 build fix] [akpm@osdl.org: HOTPLUG_CPU build fix] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com> Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>