Thread (11 messages) 11 messages, 4 authors, 2016-10-11

[PATCH] mm/vmalloc: reduce the number of lazy_max_pages to reduce latency

From: Joel Fernandes <hidden>
Date: 2016-10-09 03:43:55
Also in: linux-mm, lkml

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 1:18 AM, Chris Wilson [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 03:34:11PM +0800, Jisheng Zhang wrote:
quoted
On Marvell berlin arm64 platforms, I see the preemptoff tracer report
a max 26543 us latency at __purge_vmap_area_lazy, this latency is an
awfully bad for STB. And the ftrace log also shows __free_vmap_area
contributes most latency now. I noticed that Joel mentioned the same
issue[1] on x86 platform and gave two solutions, but it seems no patch
is sent out for this purpose.

This patch adopts Joel's first solution, but I use 16MB per core
rather than 8MB per core for the number of lazy_max_pages. After this
patch, the preemptoff tracer reports a max 6455us latency, reduced to
1/4 of original result.
My understanding is that
diff --git a/mm/vmalloc.c b/mm/vmalloc.c
index 91f44e78c516..3f7c6d6969ac 100644
--- a/mm/vmalloc.c
+++ b/mm/vmalloc.c
@@ -626,7 +626,6 @@ void set_iounmap_nonlazy(void)
 static void __purge_vmap_area_lazy(unsigned long *start, unsigned long *end,
                                        int sync, int force_flush)
 {
-       static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(purge_lock);
        struct llist_node *valist;
        struct vmap_area *va;
        struct vmap_area *n_va;
@@ -637,12 +636,6 @@ static void __purge_vmap_area_lazy(unsigned long *start, unsigned long *end,
         * should not expect such behaviour. This just simplifies locking for
         * the case that isn't actually used at the moment anyway.
         */
-       if (!sync && !force_flush) {
-               if (!spin_trylock(&purge_lock))
-                       return;
-       } else
-               spin_lock(&purge_lock);
-
        if (sync)
                purge_fragmented_blocks_allcpus();
@@ -667,7 +660,6 @@ static void __purge_vmap_area_lazy(unsigned long *start, unsigned long *end,
                        __free_vmap_area(va);
                spin_unlock(&vmap_area_lock);
        }
-       spin_unlock(&purge_lock);
 }
[..]
should now be safe. That should significantly reduce the preempt-disabled
section, I think.
I believe that the purge_lock is supposed to prevent concurrent purges
from happening.

For the case where if you have another concurrent overflow happen in
alloc_vmap_area() between the spin_unlock and purge :

spin_unlock(&vmap_area_lock);
if (!purged)
   purge_vmap_area_lazy();

Then the 2 purges would happen at the same time and could subtract
vmap_lazy_nr twice.

I had proposed to change it to mutex in [1]. How do you feel about
that? Let me know your suggestions, thanks. I am also Ok with reducing
the lazy_max_pages value.

[1] http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1603.2/04803.html

Regards,
Joel
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