Re: [PATCH 0/8] mm/swap: optimize swap cache search space

["Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>]

Chris Li <chrisl@kernel.org> writes:

> On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 6:16 PM Huang, Ying <ying.huang@intel.com> wrote:
>>
>> Chris Li <chrisl@kernel.org> writes:
>>
>> > Hi Ying,
>> >
>> > For the swap file usage, I have been considering an idea to remove the
>> > index part of the xarray from swap cache. Swap cache is different from
>> > file cache in a few aspects.
>> > For one if we want to have a folio equivalent of "large swap entry".
>> > Then the natural alignment of those swap offset on does not make
>> > sense. Ideally we should be able to write the folio to un-aligned swap
>> > file locations.
>> >
>> > The other aspect for swap files is that, we already have different
>> > data structures organized around swap offset, swap_map and
>> > swap_cgroup. If we group the swap related data structure together. We
>> > can add a pointer to a union of folio or a shadow swap entry.
>>
>> The shadow swap entry may be freed.  So we need to prepare for that.
>
> Free the shadow swap entry will just set the pointer to NULL.
> Are you concerned that the memory allocated for the pointer is not
> free to the system after the shadow swap entry is free?
>
> It will be subject to fragmentation on the free swap entry.
> In that regard, xarray is also subject to fragmentation. It will not
> free the internal node if the node has one xa_index not freed. Even if
> the xarray node is freed to slab, at slab level there is fragmentation
> as well, the backing page might not free to the system.

Sorry my words were confusing.  What I wanted to say is that the xarray
node may be freed.

>> And, in current design, only swap_map[] is allocated if the swap space
>> isn't used.  That needs to be considered too.
>
> I am aware of that. I want to make the swap_map[] not static allocated
> any more either.

Yes.  That's possible.

> The swap_map static allocation forces the rest of the swap data
> structure to have other means to sparsely allocate their data
> structure, repeating the fragmentation elsewhere, in different
> ways.That is also the one major source of the pain point hacking on
> the swap code. The data structure is spread into too many different
> places.

Look forward to more details to compare :-)

>> > We can use atomic updates on the swap struct member or breakdown the
>> > access lock by ranges just like swap cluster does.
>>
>> The swap code uses xarray in a simple way.  That gives us opportunity to
>> optimize.  For example, it makes it easy to use multiple xarray
>
> The fixed swap offset range makes it like an array. There are many
> ways to shard the array like swap entry, e.g. swap cluster is one way
> to shard it. Multiple xarray is another way. We can also do multiple
> xarray like sharding, or even more fancy ones.

--
Best Regards,
Huang, Ying