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[00/10,v6] Migrate Pages in lieu of discard

Message ID 20210304235949.7922C1C3@viggo.jf.intel.com (mailing list archive)
Headers show
Series Migrate Pages in lieu of discard | expand

Message

Dave Hansen March 4, 2021, 11:59 p.m. UTC
The full series is also available here:

	https://github.com/hansendc/linux/tree/automigrate-20210304

which also inclues some vm.zone_reclaim_mode sysctl ABI fixup
prerequisites.

The meat of this patch is in:

	[PATCH 05/10] mm/migrate: demote pages during reclaim

Which also has the most changes since the last post.  This version is
mostly to address review comments from Yang Shi and Oscar Salvador.
Review comments are documented in the individual patch changelogs.

This also contains a few prerequisite patches that fix up an issue
with the vm.zone_reclaim_mode sysctl ABI.

Changes since (automigrate-20210122):
 * move from GFP_HIGHUSER -> GFP_HIGHUSER_MOVABLE since pages *are*
   movable.
 * Separate out helpers that check for being able to relaim anonymous
   pages versus being able to meaningfully scan the anon LRU.

--

We're starting to see systems with more and more kinds of memory such
as Intel's implementation of persistent memory.

Let's say you have a system with some DRAM and some persistent memory.
Today, once DRAM fills up, reclaim will start and some of the DRAM
contents will be thrown out.  Allocations will, at some point, start
falling over to the slower persistent memory.

That has two nasty properties.  First, the newer allocations can end
up in the slower persistent memory.  Second, reclaimed data in DRAM
are just discarded even if there are gobs of space in persistent
memory that could be used.

This set implements a solution to these problems.  At the end of the
reclaim process in shrink_page_list() just before the last page
refcount is dropped, the page is migrated to persistent memory instead
of being dropped.

While I've talked about a DRAM/PMEM pairing, this approach would
function in any environment where memory tiers exist.

This is not perfect.  It "strands" pages in slower memory and never
brings them back to fast DRAM.  Other things need to be built to
promote hot pages back to DRAM.

This is also all based on an upstream mechanism that allows
persistent memory to be onlined and used as if it were volatile:

	http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190124231441.37A4A305@viggo.jf.intel.com

== Open Issues ==

 * For cpusets and memory policies that restrict allocations
   to PMEM, is it OK to demote to PMEM?  Do we need a cgroup-
   level API to opt-in or opt-out of these migrations?
 * Could be more aggressive about where anon LRU scanning occurs
   since it no longer necessarily involves I/O.  get_scan_count()
   for instance says: "If we have no swap space, do not bother
   scanning anon pages"

--

 Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst |    9
 include/linux/migrate.h                 |   20 +
 include/linux/swap.h                    |    3
 include/linux/vm_event_item.h           |    2
 include/trace/events/migrate.h          |    3
 include/uapi/linux/mempolicy.h          |    1
 mm/compaction.c                         |    3
 mm/gup.c                                |    4
 mm/internal.h                           |    5
 mm/memory-failure.c                     |    4
 mm/memory_hotplug.c                     |    4
 mm/mempolicy.c                          |    8
 mm/migrate.c                            |  369 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 mm/page_alloc.c                         |   13 -
 mm/vmscan.c                             |  173 +++++++++++++--
 mm/vmstat.c                             |    2
 16 files changed, 560 insertions(+), 63 deletions(-)

--

Changes since (automigrate-20200818):
 * Fall back to normal reclaim when demotion fails
 * Fix some compile issues, when page migration and NUMA are off

Changes since (automigrate-20201007):
 * separate out checks for "can scan anon LRU" from "can actually
   swap anon pages right now".  Previous series conflated them
   and may have been overly aggressive scanning LRU
 * add MR_DEMOTION to tracepoint header
 * remove unnecessary hugetlb page check

Changes since (https://lwn.net/Articles/824830/):
 * Use higher-level migrate_pages() API approach from Yang Shi's
   earlier patches.
 * made sure to actually check node_reclaim_mode's new bit
 * disabled migration entirely before introducing RECLAIM_MIGRATE
 * Replace GFP_NOWAIT with explicit __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM and
   comment why we want that.
 * Comment on effects of that keep multiple source nodes from
   sharing target nodes

Cc: Yang Shi <yang.shi@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: osalvador <osalvador@suse.de>
Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>

Comments

Yang Shi March 9, 2021, 12:34 a.m. UTC | #1
On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 4:00 PM Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>
>
> The full series is also available here:
>
>         https://github.com/hansendc/linux/tree/automigrate-20210304
>
> which also inclues some vm.zone_reclaim_mode sysctl ABI fixup
> prerequisites.
>
> The meat of this patch is in:
>
>         [PATCH 05/10] mm/migrate: demote pages during reclaim
>
> Which also has the most changes since the last post.  This version is
> mostly to address review comments from Yang Shi and Oscar Salvador.
> Review comments are documented in the individual patch changelogs.
>
> This also contains a few prerequisite patches that fix up an issue
> with the vm.zone_reclaim_mode sysctl ABI.
>
> Changes since (automigrate-20210122):
>  * move from GFP_HIGHUSER -> GFP_HIGHUSER_MOVABLE since pages *are*
>    movable.
>  * Separate out helpers that check for being able to relaim anonymous
>    pages versus being able to meaningfully scan the anon LRU.
>
> --
>
> We're starting to see systems with more and more kinds of memory such
> as Intel's implementation of persistent memory.
>
> Let's say you have a system with some DRAM and some persistent memory.
> Today, once DRAM fills up, reclaim will start and some of the DRAM
> contents will be thrown out.  Allocations will, at some point, start
> falling over to the slower persistent memory.
>
> That has two nasty properties.  First, the newer allocations can end
> up in the slower persistent memory.  Second, reclaimed data in DRAM
> are just discarded even if there are gobs of space in persistent
> memory that could be used.
>
> This set implements a solution to these problems.  At the end of the
> reclaim process in shrink_page_list() just before the last page
> refcount is dropped, the page is migrated to persistent memory instead
> of being dropped.
>
> While I've talked about a DRAM/PMEM pairing, this approach would
> function in any environment where memory tiers exist.
>
> This is not perfect.  It "strands" pages in slower memory and never
> brings them back to fast DRAM.  Other things need to be built to
> promote hot pages back to DRAM.
>
> This is also all based on an upstream mechanism that allows
> persistent memory to be onlined and used as if it were volatile:
>
>         http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190124231441.37A4A305@viggo.jf.intel.com
>
> == Open Issues ==
>
>  * For cpusets and memory policies that restrict allocations
>    to PMEM, is it OK to demote to PMEM?  Do we need a cgroup-
>    level API to opt-in or opt-out of these migrations?

I'm wondering if such usecases, which don't want to have memory
allocate on pmem, will allow memory swapped out or reclaimed? If swap
is allowed then I failed to see why migrating to pmem should be
disallowed. If swap is not allowed, they should call mlock, then the
memory won't be migrated to pmem as well.

>  * Could be more aggressive about where anon LRU scanning occurs
>    since it no longer necessarily involves I/O.  get_scan_count()
>    for instance says: "If we have no swap space, do not bother
>    scanning anon pages"

Yes, I agree. Johannes's patchset
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200520232525.798933-1-hannes@cmpxchg.org/#r)
has lifted the swappiness to 200 so anonymous lru could be scanned
more aggressively. We definitely could tweak this if needed.

>
> --
>
>  Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst |    9
>  include/linux/migrate.h                 |   20 +
>  include/linux/swap.h                    |    3
>  include/linux/vm_event_item.h           |    2
>  include/trace/events/migrate.h          |    3
>  include/uapi/linux/mempolicy.h          |    1
>  mm/compaction.c                         |    3
>  mm/gup.c                                |    4
>  mm/internal.h                           |    5
>  mm/memory-failure.c                     |    4
>  mm/memory_hotplug.c                     |    4
>  mm/mempolicy.c                          |    8
>  mm/migrate.c                            |  369 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
>  mm/page_alloc.c                         |   13 -
>  mm/vmscan.c                             |  173 +++++++++++++--
>  mm/vmstat.c                             |    2
>  16 files changed, 560 insertions(+), 63 deletions(-)
>
> --
>
> Changes since (automigrate-20200818):
>  * Fall back to normal reclaim when demotion fails
>  * Fix some compile issues, when page migration and NUMA are off
>
> Changes since (automigrate-20201007):
>  * separate out checks for "can scan anon LRU" from "can actually
>    swap anon pages right now".  Previous series conflated them
>    and may have been overly aggressive scanning LRU
>  * add MR_DEMOTION to tracepoint header
>  * remove unnecessary hugetlb page check
>
> Changes since (https://lwn.net/Articles/824830/):
>  * Use higher-level migrate_pages() API approach from Yang Shi's
>    earlier patches.
>  * made sure to actually check node_reclaim_mode's new bit
>  * disabled migration entirely before introducing RECLAIM_MIGRATE
>  * Replace GFP_NOWAIT with explicit __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM and
>    comment why we want that.
>  * Comment on effects of that keep multiple source nodes from
>    sharing target nodes
>
> Cc: Yang Shi <yang.shi@linux.alibaba.com>
> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
> Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
> Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
> Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
> Cc: osalvador <osalvador@suse.de>
> Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
>
>
Dave Hansen March 9, 2021, 9:52 p.m. UTC | #2
...
>> == Open Issues ==
>>
>>  * For cpusets and memory policies that restrict allocations
>>    to PMEM, is it OK to demote to PMEM?  Do we need a cgroup-
>>    level API to opt-in or opt-out of these migrations?
> 
> I'm wondering if such usecases, which don't want to have memory
> allocate on pmem, will allow memory swapped out or reclaimed? If swap
> is allowed then I failed to see why migrating to pmem should be
> disallowed. If swap is not allowed, they should call mlock, then the
> memory won't be migrated to pmem as well.

Agreed.  I have a hard time imagining there are a lot of folks that can
tolerate the massive overhead from swapping, but can't tolerate the much
smaller overhead of going to pmem instead of DRAM.