Re: [PATCH v7 0/7] Introduce ZONE_CMA

[Joonsoo Kim <js1304@gmail.com>]

Sorry for the late response. I was on a vacation.

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 03:32:29PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 02-05-17 13:01:32, Joonsoo Kim wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 05:06:36PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> [...]
> > > I see this point and I agree that using a specific zone might be a
> > > _nicer_ solution in the end but you have to consider another aspects as
> > > well. The main one I am worried about is a long term maintainability.
> > > We are really out of page flags and consuming one for a rather specific
> > > usecase is not good. Look at ZONE_DMA. I am pretty sure that almost
> > > no sane HW needs 16MB zone anymore, yet we have hard time to get rid
> > > of it and so we have that memory laying around unused all the time
> > > and blocking one page flag bit. CMA falls into a similar category
> > > AFAIU. I wouldn't be all that surprised if a future HW will not need CMA
> > > allocations in few years, yet we will have to fight to get rid of it
> > > like we do with ZONE_DMA. And not only that. We will also have to fight
> > > finding page flags for other more general usecases in the meantime.
> > 
> > This maintenance problem is inherent. This problem exists even if we
> > uses MIGRATETYPE approach. We cannot remove many hooks for CMA if a
> > future HW will not need CMA allocation in few years. The only
> > difference is that one takes single zone bit only for CMA user and the
> > other approach takes many hooks that we need to take care about it all
> > the time.
> 
> And I consider this a big difference. Because while hooks are not nice
> they will affect CMA users (in a sense of bugs/performance etc.). While
> an additional bit consumed will affect potential future and more generic
> features.

Because these hooks are so tricky and are spread on many places,
bugs about these hooks can be made by *non-CMA* user and they hurt
*CMA* user. These hooks could also delay non-CMA user's development speed
since there are many hooks about CMA and understanding how CMA is managed
is rather difficult. I think that this is a big maintenance overhead
not only for CMA user but also for non-CMA user. So, I think that it
can justify additional bit consumed.

> 
> [...]
> > > I believe that the overhead in the hot path is not such a big deal. We
> > > have means to make it 0 when CMA is not used by jumplabels. I assume
> > > that the vast majority of systems will not use CMA. Those systems which
> > > use CMA should be able to cope with some slight overhead IMHO.
> > 
> > Please don't underestimate number of CMA user. Most of android device
> > uses CMA. So, there would be more devices using CMA than the server
> > not using CMA. They also have a right to experience the best performance.
> 
> This is not a fair comparison, though. Android development model is much
> more faster and tend to not care about future maintainability at all. I
> do not know about any android device that would run on a clean vanilla
> kernel because vendors simply do not care enough (or have time) to put
> the code into a proper shape to upstream it. I understand that this
> model might work quite well for rapidly changing and moving mobile or
> IoT segment but it is not the greatest fit to motivate the core kernel
> subsystem development. We are not in the drivers space!
> 
> [...]
> > > This looks like a nice clean up. Those ifdefs are ugly as hell. One
> > > could argue that some of that could be cleaned up by simply adding some
> > > helpers (with a jump label to reduce the overhead), though. But is this
> > > really strong enough reason to bring the whole zone in? I am not really
> > > convinced to be honest.
> > 
> > Please don't underestimate the benefit of this patchset.
> > I have said that we need *more* hooks to fix all the problems.
> > 
> > And, please think that this code removal is not only code removal but
> > also concept removal. With this removing, we don't need to consider
> > ALLOC_CMA for alloc_flags when calling zone_watermark_ok(). There are
> > many bugs on it and it still remains. We don't need to consider
> > pageblock migratetype when handling pageblock migratetype. We don't
> > need to take a great care about calculating the number of CMA
> > freepages.
> 
> And all this can be isolated to CMA specific hooks with mostly minimum
> impact to most users. I hear you saying that zone approach is more natural
> and I would agree if we wouldn't have to care about the number of zones.

I attach a solution about one more bit in page flags although I don't
agree with your opinion that additional bit is no-go approach. Just
note that we have already used three bits for zone encoding in some
configuration due to ZONE_DEVICE.

> 
> > > [...]
> > > 
> > > > > Please do _not_ take this as a NAK from me. At least not at this time. I
> > > > > am still trying to understand all the consequences but my intuition
> > > > > tells me that building on top of highmem like approach will turn out to
> > > > > be problematic in future (as we have already seen with the highmem and
> > > > > movable zones) so this needs a very prudent consideration.
> > > > 
> > > > I can understand that you are prudent to this issue. However, it takes more
> > > > than two years and many people already expressed that ZONE approach is the
> > > > way to go.
> > > 
> > > I can see a single Acked-by and one Reviewed-by. It would be much more
> > > convincing to see much larger support. Do not take me wrong I am not
> > > trying to undermine the feedback so far but we should be clear about one
> > > thing. CMA is mostly motivated by the industry which tries to overcome
> > > HW limitations which can change in future very easily. I would rather
> > > see good enough solution for something like that than a nicer solution
> > > which is pushing additional burden on more general usecases.
> > 
> > First of all, current MIGRATETYPE approach isn't good enough to me.
> > They caused too many problems and there are many remanining problems.
> > It will causes maintenance issue for a long time.
> > 
> > And, although good enough solution can be better than nicer solution
> > in some cases, it looks like current situation isn't that case.
> > There is a single reason, saving page flag bit, to support good enough
> > solution.
> > 
> > I'd like to ask reversly. Is this a enough reason to make CMA user to
> > suffer from bugs?
> 
> No, but I haven't heard any single argument that those bugs are
> impossible to fix with the current approach. They might be harder to fix
> but if I can chose between harder for CMA and harder for other more
> generic HW independent features I will go for the first one. And do not
> take me wrong, I have nothing against CMA as such. It solves a real life
> problem. I just believe it doesn't deserve to consume a new bit in page
> flags because that is just too scarce resource.

As I mentioned above, I think that maintenance overhead due to CMA
deserves to consume a new bit in page flags. It also provide us
extendability to introduce more zones in the future.

Anyway, this value-judgement is subjective so I guess that we
cannot agree with each other. To solve your concern,
I make following solution. Please let me know your opinion about this.
This patch can be applied on top of my ZONE_CMA series.

Thanks.


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