Re: [PATCH v5 3/5] mm: LARGE_ANON_FOLIO for improved performance

[Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>]

On 01/09/2023 18:18, Yang Shi wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 1, 2023 at 9:13 AM Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 10:15:09AM -0700, Yang Shi wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 12:57 AM David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>> Let's talk about that in a bi-weekly MM session. (I proposed it as a
>>>> topic for next week).
>>>>
>>>> As raised in another mail, we can then discuss
>>>> * how we want to call this feature (transparent large pages? there is
>>>>    the concern that "THP" might confuse users. Maybe we can consider
>>>>    "large" the more generic version and "huge" only PMD-size, TBD)
>>>
>>> I tend to agree. "Huge" means PMD-mappable (transparent or HugeTLB),
>>> "Large" means any order but less than PMD-mappable order, "Gigantic"
>>> means PUD mappable. This should incur the least confusion IMHO.
>>
>> "Large" means any order > 0.  The limitation to <= PMD_ORDER is simply
>> because I don't want to go through the whole VM and fix all the places
>> that assume that pmd_page() returns a head page.  The benefit to doing so
>> is quite small, and the work to achieve it is quite large.  The amount of
>> work needed should decrease over time as we convert more code to folios,
>> so deferring it is the right decision today.
> 
> Yeah, I agree. And we are on the same page.
> 
>>
>> But nobody should have the impression that large folios are smaller
>> than PMD size, nor even less than or equal.  Just like they shouldn't
>> think that large folios depend on CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE.  They do
>> today, but that's purely an implementation detail that will be removed
>> eventually.
> 
> Yes, THP should be just a special case of large folio from page table
> point of view (for example, PMD-mappable vs non-PMD-mappable).
> 
>>
>>>> I think there *really* has to be a way to disable it for a running
>>>> system, otherwise no distro will dare pulling it in, even after we
>>>> figured out the other stuff.
>>>
>>> TBH I really don't like to tie large folio to THP toggles. THP
>>> (PMD-mappable) is just a special case of LAF. The large folio should
>>> be tried whenever it is possible ideally. But I do agree we may not be
>>> able to achieve the ideal case at the time being, and also understand
>>> the concern about regression in early adoption, so a knob that can
>>> disable large folio may be needed for now. But it should be just a
>>> simple binary knob (on/off), and should not be a part of kernel ABI
>>> (temporary and debugging only) IMHO.
>>
>> Best of luck trying to remove it after you've shipped it ... we've
>> never been able to remove any of the THP toggles, only make them more
>> complicated.
> 
> Fingers crossed... and my point is we should try to avoid making
> things more complicated. It may be hard...
> 
>>
>>> One more thing we may discuss is whether huge page madvise APIs should
>>> take effect for large folio or not.
>>
>> They already do for file large folios; we listen to MADV_HUGEPAGE and
>> attempt to allocate PMD_ORDER folios for faults.
> 
> OK, file folio may be simpler than anonymous. For anonymous folio,
> there may be two potential cases depending on our choice:
> 
> Tie large folio to THP knobs:
> MADV_HUGEPAGE - large folio if THP is on/no large folio if THP is off
> MADV_NOHUGEPAGE - no large folio
> 
> Not tie large folio to THP knob:
> MADV_HUGEPAGE - always large folio
> MADV_NOHUGEPAGE - shall create large folio?
> 

In my mind, the debate on how LAF and MADV_NOHUGEPAGE should interact is
concluded; David has explained a QEMU live migration use case, which would break
if a LAF was allocated for a VMA with MADV_NOHUGEPAGE (see [1]).

Given LAF and THP controls must be tied together at MADV_NOHUGEPAGE as a
minimum, then for me it makes most sense to expose LAF to user space as a
generalization of THP rather than a separate, independent feature. And if taking
such a route, Huang Ying's suggestion at [2] sounds like a good starting point.

Anyway, let's discuss in the mm meeting as David requested.


[1]
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/b936041c-08a7-e844-19e7-eafc4ddf63b9@redhat.com/
[2]
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/87v8dg6lfu.fsf@yhuang6-desk2.ccr.corp.intel.com/