Re: [PATCH/RFC] mm: add and use batched version of __tlb_remove_table()
From: Dave Hansen <hidden>
Date: 2021-12-17 18:26:44
Also in:
linux-arch, linux-mm, linux-s390, lkml, sparclinux
On 12/17/21 12:19 AM, Nikita Yushchenko wrote:
When batched page table freeing via struct mmu_table_batch is used, the final freeing in __tlb_remove_table_free() executes a loop, calling arch hook __tlb_remove_table() to free each table individually. Shift that loop down to archs. This allows archs to optimize it, by freeing multiple tables in a single release_pages() call. This is faster than individual put_page() calls, especially with memcg accounting enabled.
Could we quantify "faster"? There's a non-trivial amount of code being added here and it would be nice to back it up with some cold-hard numbers.
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
--- a/mm/mmu_gather.c +++ b/mm/mmu_gather.c@@ -95,11 +95,7 @@ bool __tlb_remove_page_size(struct mmu_gather *tlb, struct page *page, int page_ static void __tlb_remove_table_free(struct mmu_table_batch *batch) { - int i; - - for (i = 0; i < batch->nr; i++) - __tlb_remove_table(batch->tables[i]); - + __tlb_remove_tables(batch->tables, batch->nr); free_page((unsigned long)batch); }
This leaves a single call-site for __tlb_remove_table():
static void tlb_remove_table_one(void *table)
{
tlb_remove_table_sync_one();
__tlb_remove_table(table);
}Is that worth it, or could it just be: __tlb_remove_tables(&table, 1); ?
-void free_pages_and_swap_cache(struct page **pages, int nr)
+static void __free_pages_and_swap_cache(struct page **pages, int nr,
+ bool do_lru)
{
- struct page **pagep = pages;
int i;
- lru_add_drain();
+ if (do_lru)
+ lru_add_drain();
for (i = 0; i < nr; i++)
- free_swap_cache(pagep[i]);
- release_pages(pagep, nr);
+ free_swap_cache(pages[i]);
+ release_pages(pages, nr);
+}
+
+void free_pages_and_swap_cache(struct page **pages, int nr)
+{
+ __free_pages_and_swap_cache(pages, nr, true);
+}
+
+void free_pages_and_swap_cache_nolru(struct page **pages, int nr)
+{
+ __free_pages_and_swap_cache(pages, nr, false);
}
This went unmentioned in the changelog. But, it seems like there's a
specific optimization here. In the exiting code,
free_pages_and_swap_cache() is wasteful if no page in pages[] is on the
LRU. It doesn't need the lru_add_drain().
Any code that knows it is freeing all non-LRU pages can call
free_pages_and_swap_cache_nolru() which should perform better than
free_pages_and_swap_cache().
Should we add this to the for loop in __free_pages_and_swap_cache()?
for (i = 0; i < nr; i++) {
if (!do_lru)
VM_WARN_ON_ONCE_PAGE(PageLRU(pagep[i]),
pagep[i]);
free_swap_cache(...);
}
But, even more than that, do all the architectures even need the
free_swap_cache()? PageSwapCache() will always be false on x86, which
makes the loop kinda silly. x86 could, for instance, just do:
static inline void __tlb_remove_tables(void **tables, int nr)
{
release_pages((struct page **)tables, nr);
}
I _think_ this will work everywhere that has whole pages as page tables.
Taking that one step further, what if we only had one generic:
static inline void tlb_remove_tables(void **tables, int nr)
{
int i;
#ifdef ARCH_PAGE_TABLES_ARE_FULL_PAGE
release_pages((struct page **)tables, nr);
#else
arch_tlb_remove_tables(tables, i);
#endif
}
Architectures that set ARCH_PAGE_TABLES_ARE_FULL_PAGE (or whatever)
don't need to implement __tlb_remove_table() at all *and* can do
release_pages() directly.
This avoids all the confusion with the swap cache and LRU naming.