Re: [PATCH v17 1/9] mm: Adjust shuffle code to allow for future coalescing

Re: [PATCH v17 1/9] mm: Adjust shuffle code to allow for future coalescing

[Bodeddula, Balasubramaniam]

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Hi Alexander,

My team was evaluating FPR and observed that these patches don’t report memory for deallocated hugeapages directly and need to cycle through buddy allocator. For example, say we need to allocate a maximum of 12 * 1G hugepages (by setting nr_hugepages), use 8 * 1G hugepages, and then deallocate 4 * 1G hugepages. Unlike regular 4K pages, this 4G worth of memory will not be reported until we set nr_hugepages to 8 (wait sometime(?) for FPR to do its work) and set it back again to 12. While this works fine in theory, in practice,  setting nr_hugepages to 12 could fail too due to fragmentation (this could depend on other processes memory usage behavior).

If FPR could report this free memory without cycling through buddy allocator, it makes the solution more robust. I am looking for advice on how feasible this approach is and what would be the effort for building this functionality. In general, if there are other thoughts on how we can address this, please do let me know.

Thanks,
bala

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Re: [PATCH v17 1/9] mm: Adjust shuffle code to allow for future coalescing

[Alexander Duyck]

Hi Bala,

There was a similar effort several months ago that was trying to do
this in conjunction with pre-zeroing of pages. I suspect if you wanted
to you could probably pick up some of their patch set and work with
that. It can be found at:
https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mm/msg239735.html

Thanks.

- Alex

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:13 AM Bodeddula, Balasubramaniam
<bodeddub@amazon.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Alexander,
>
>
>
> My team was evaluating FPR and observed that these patches don’t report memory for deallocated hugeapages directly and need to cycle through buddy allocator. For example, say we need to allocate a maximum of 12 * 1G hugepages (by setting nr_hugepages), use 8 * 1G hugepages, and then deallocate 4 * 1G hugepages. Unlike regular 4K pages, this 4G worth of memory will not be reported until we set nr_hugepages to 8 (wait sometime(?) for FPR to do its work) and set it back again to 12. While this works fine in theory, in practice,  setting nr_hugepages to 12 could fail too due to fragmentation (this could depend on other processes memory usage behavior).
>
>
>
> If FPR could report this free memory without cycling through buddy allocator, it makes the solution more robust. I am looking for advice on how feasible this approach is and what would be the effort for building this functionality. In general, if there are other thoughts on how we can address this, please do let me know.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> bala

[PATCH v17 0/9] mm / virtio: Provide support for free page reporting

[Alexander Duyck]

This series provides an asynchronous means of reporting free guest pages
to a hypervisor so that the memory associated with those pages can be
dropped and reused by other processes and/or guests on the host. Using
this it is possible to avoid unnecessary I/O to disk and greatly improve
performance in the case of memory overcommit on the host.

When enabled we will be performing a scan of free memory every 2 seconds
while pages of sufficiently high order are being freed. In each pass at
least one sixteenth of each free list will be reported. By doing this we
avoid racing against other threads that may be causing a high amount of
memory churn.

The lowest page order currently scanned when reporting pages is
pageblock_order so that this feature will not interfere with the use of
Transparent Huge Pages in the case of virtualization.

Currently this is only in use by virtio-balloon however there is the hope
that at some point in the future other hypervisors might be able to make
use of it. In the virtio-balloon/QEMU implementation the hypervisor is
currently using MADV_DONTNEED to indicate to the host kernel that the page
is currently free. It will be zeroed and faulted back into the guest the
next time the page is accessed.

To track if a page is reported or not the Uptodate flag was repurposed and
used as a Reported flag for Buddy pages. We walk though the free list
isolating pages and adding them to the scatterlist until we either
encounter the end of the list or have processed at least one sixteenth of
the pages that were listed in nr_free prior to us starting. If we fill the
scatterlist before we reach the end of the list we rotate the list so that
the first unreported page we encounter is moved to the head of the list as
that is where we will resume after we have freed the reported pages back
into the tail of the list.

Below are the results from various benchmarks. I primarily focused on two
tests. The first is the will-it-scale/page_fault2 test, and the other is
a modified version of will-it-scale/page_fault1 that was enabled to use
THP. I did this as it allows for better visibility into different parts
of the memory subsystem. The guest is running with 32G for RAM on one
node of a E5-2630 v3. The host has had some features such as CPU turbo
disabled in the BIOS.

Test                   page_fault1 (THP)    page_fault2
Name            tasks  Process Iter  STDEV  Process Iter  STDEV
Baseline            1    1012402.50  0.14%     361855.25  0.81%
                   16    8827457.25  0.09%    3282347.00  0.34%

Patches Applied     1    1007897.00  0.23%     361887.00  0.26%
                   16    8784741.75  0.39%    3240669.25  0.48%

Patches Enabled     1    1010227.50  0.39%     359749.25  0.56%
                   16    8756219.00  0.24%    3226608.75  0.97%

Patches Enabled     1    1050982.00  4.26%     357966.25  0.14%
 page shuffle      16    8672601.25  0.49%    3223177.75  0.40%

Patches enabled     1    1003238.00  0.22%     360211.00  0.22%
 shuffle w/ RFC    16    8767010.50  0.32%    3199874.00  0.71%

The results above are for a baseline with a linux-next-20191219 kernel,
that kernel with this patch set applied but page reporting disabled in
virtio-balloon, the patches applied and page reporting fully enabled, the
patches enabled with page shuffling enabled, and the patches applied with
page shuffling enabled and an RFC patch that makes used of MADV_FREE in
QEMU. These results include the deviation seen between the average value
reported here versus the high and/or low value. I observed that during the
test memory usage for the first three tests never dropped whereas with the
patches fully enabled the VM would drop to using only a few GB of the
host's memory when switching from memhog to page fault tests.

Any of the overhead visible with this patch set enabled seems due to page
faults caused by accessing the reported pages and the host zeroing the page
before giving it back to the guest. This overhead is much more visible when
using THP than with standard 4K pages. In addition page shuffling seemed to
increase the amount of faults generated due to an increase in memory churn.
The overehad is reduced when using MADV_FREE as we can avoid the extra
zeroing of the pages when they are reintroduced to the host, as can be seen
when the RFC is applied with shuffling enabled.

The overall guest size is kept fairly small to only a few GB while the test
is running. If the host memory were oversubscribed this patch set should
result in a performance improvement as swapping memory in the host can be
avoided.

A brief history on the background of free page reporting can be found at:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/29f43d5796feed0dec8e8bb98b187d9dac03b900.camel@linux.intel.com/

Changes from v14:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20191119214454.24996.66289.stgit@localhost.localdomain/
Renamed "unused page reporting" to "free page reporting"
  Updated code, kconfig, and patch descriptions
Split out patch for __free_isolated_page
  Renamed function to __putback_isolated_page
Rewrote core reporting functionality
  Added logic to reschedule worker in 2 seconds instead of run to completion
  Removed reported_pages statistics
  Removed REPORTING_REQUESTED bit used in zone flags
  Replaced page_reporting_dev_info refcount with state variable
  Removed scatterlist from page_reporting_dev_info
  Removed capacity from page reporting device
  Added dynamic scatterlist allocation/free at start/end of reporting process
  Updated __free_one_page so that reported pages are not always added to tail
  Added logic to handle error from report function
Updated virtio-balloon patch that adds support for page reporting
  Updated patch description to try and highlight differences in approaches
  Updated logic to reflect that we cannot limit the scatterlist from device
  Added logic to return error from report function
Moved documentation patch to end of patch set

Changes from v15:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20191205161928.19548.41654.stgit@localhost.localdomain/
Rebased on linux-next-20191219
Split out patches for budget and moving head to last page processed
Updated budget code to reduce how much memory is reported per pass
Added logic to also rotate the list if we exit due a page isolation failure
Added migratetype as argument in __putback_isolated_page

Changes from v16:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200103210509.29237.18426.stgit@localhost.localdomain/
Rebased on linux-next-20200122
  Updated patch 2 to to account for removal of pr_info in __isolate_free_page 
Updated patch title for patches 7, 8, and 9 to included mm/page_reporting

Changes from v16.1:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200122173040.6142.39116.stgit@localhost.localdomain/
Rebased QEMU patches to latest
Rebased on linux-next-20200211
  Tweaked cover page to more accurately describe hinting process
  Verified results have not changed in significant way

---

Alexander Duyck (9):
      mm: Adjust shuffle code to allow for future coalescing
      mm: Use zone and order instead of free area in free_list manipulators
      mm: Add function __putback_isolated_page
      mm: Introduce Reported pages
      virtio-balloon: Pull page poisoning config out of free page hinting
      virtio-balloon: Add support for providing free page reports to host
      mm/page_reporting: Rotate reported pages to the tail of the list
      mm/page_reporting: Add budget limit on how many pages can be reported per pass
      mm/page_reporting: Add free page reporting documentation


 Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst |   41 +++
 drivers/virtio/Kconfig                   |    1 
 drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c          |   87 +++++++
 include/linux/mmzone.h                   |   44 ----
 include/linux/page-flags.h               |   11 +
 include/linux/page_reporting.h           |   26 ++
 include/uapi/linux/virtio_balloon.h      |    1 
 mm/Kconfig                               |   11 +
 mm/Makefile                              |    1 
 mm/internal.h                            |    2 
 mm/page_alloc.c                          |  164 ++++++++++----
 mm/page_isolation.c                      |    6 
 mm/page_reporting.c                      |  364 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 mm/page_reporting.h                      |   54 ++++
 mm/shuffle.c                             |   12 -
 mm/shuffle.h                             |    6 
 16 files changed, 725 insertions(+), 106 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst
 create mode 100644 include/linux/page_reporting.h
 create mode 100644 mm/page_reporting.c
 create mode 100644 mm/page_reporting.h

--

[PATCH v17 1/9] mm: Adjust shuffle code to allow for future coalescing

[Alexander Duyck]

From: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@linux.intel.com>

Move the head/tail adding logic out of the shuffle code and into the
__free_one_page function since ultimately that is where it is really
needed anyway. By doing this we should be able to reduce the overhead
and can consolidate all of the list addition bits in one spot.

Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@linux.intel.com>
---
 include/linux/mmzone.h |   12 --------
 mm/page_alloc.c        |   71 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------
 mm/shuffle.c           |   12 ++++----
 mm/shuffle.h           |    6 ++++
 4 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 47 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index 462f6873905a..bdcd071ab67f 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -116,18 +116,6 @@ static inline void add_to_free_area_tail(struct page *page, struct free_area *ar
 	area->nr_free++;
 }
 
-#ifdef CONFIG_SHUFFLE_PAGE_ALLOCATOR
-/* Used to preserve page allocation order entropy */
-void add_to_free_area_random(struct page *page, struct free_area *area,
-		int migratetype);
-#else
-static inline void add_to_free_area_random(struct page *page,
-		struct free_area *area, int migratetype)
-{
-	add_to_free_area(page, area, migratetype);
-}
-#endif
-
 /* Used for pages which are on another list */
 static inline void move_to_free_area(struct page *page, struct free_area *area,
 			     int migratetype)
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 3c4eb750a199..bf36cdfea07a 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -871,6 +871,36 @@ static inline struct capture_control *task_capc(struct zone *zone)
 #endif /* CONFIG_COMPACTION */
 
 /*
+ * If this is not the largest possible page, check if the buddy
+ * of the next-highest order is free. If it is, it's possible
+ * that pages are being freed that will coalesce soon. In case,
+ * that is happening, add the free page to the tail of the list
+ * so it's less likely to be used soon and more likely to be merged
+ * as a higher order page
+ */
+static inline bool
+buddy_merge_likely(unsigned long pfn, unsigned long buddy_pfn,
+		   struct page *page, unsigned int order)
+{
+	struct page *higher_page, *higher_buddy;
+	unsigned long combined_pfn;
+
+	if (order >= MAX_ORDER - 2)
+		return false;
+
+	if (!pfn_valid_within(buddy_pfn))
+		return false;
+
+	combined_pfn = buddy_pfn & pfn;
+	higher_page = page + (combined_pfn - pfn);
+	buddy_pfn = __find_buddy_pfn(combined_pfn, order + 1);
+	higher_buddy = higher_page + (buddy_pfn - combined_pfn);
+
+	return pfn_valid_within(buddy_pfn) &&
+	       page_is_buddy(higher_page, higher_buddy, order + 1);
+}
+
+/*
  * Freeing function for a buddy system allocator.
  *
  * The concept of a buddy system is to maintain direct-mapped table
@@ -899,11 +929,13 @@ static inline void __free_one_page(struct page *page,
 		struct zone *zone, unsigned int order,
 		int migratetype)
 {
-	unsigned long combined_pfn;
+	struct capture_control *capc = task_capc(zone);
 	unsigned long uninitialized_var(buddy_pfn);
-	struct page *buddy;
+	unsigned long combined_pfn;
+	struct free_area *area;
 	unsigned int max_order;
-	struct capture_control *capc = task_capc(zone);
+	struct page *buddy;
+	bool to_tail;
 
 	max_order = min_t(unsigned int, MAX_ORDER, pageblock_order + 1);
 
@@ -972,35 +1004,16 @@ static inline void __free_one_page(struct page *page,
 done_merging:
 	set_page_order(page, order);
 
-	/*
-	 * If this is not the largest possible page, check if the buddy
-	 * of the next-highest order is free. If it is, it's possible
-	 * that pages are being freed that will coalesce soon. In case,
-	 * that is happening, add the free page to the tail of the list
-	 * so it's less likely to be used soon and more likely to be merged
-	 * as a higher order page
-	 */
-	if ((order < MAX_ORDER-2) && pfn_valid_within(buddy_pfn)
-			&& !is_shuffle_order(order)) {
-		struct page *higher_page, *higher_buddy;
-		combined_pfn = buddy_pfn & pfn;
-		higher_page = page + (combined_pfn - pfn);
-		buddy_pfn = __find_buddy_pfn(combined_pfn, order + 1);
-		higher_buddy = higher_page + (buddy_pfn - combined_pfn);
-		if (pfn_valid_within(buddy_pfn) &&
-		    page_is_buddy(higher_page, higher_buddy, order + 1)) {
-			add_to_free_area_tail(page, &zone->free_area[order],
-					      migratetype);
-			return;
-		}
-	}
-
+	area = &zone->free_area[order];
 	if (is_shuffle_order(order))
-		add_to_free_area_random(page, &zone->free_area[order],
-				migratetype);
+		to_tail = shuffle_pick_tail();
 	else
-		add_to_free_area(page, &zone->free_area[order], migratetype);
+		to_tail = buddy_merge_likely(pfn, buddy_pfn, page, order);
 
+	if (to_tail)
+		add_to_free_area_tail(page, area, migratetype);
+	else
+		add_to_free_area(page, area, migratetype);
 }
 
 /*
diff --git a/mm/shuffle.c b/mm/shuffle.c
index b3fe97fd6654..e65d57f39486 100644
--- a/mm/shuffle.c
+++ b/mm/shuffle.c
@@ -183,11 +183,11 @@ void __meminit __shuffle_free_memory(pg_data_t *pgdat)
 		shuffle_zone(z);
 }
 
-void add_to_free_area_random(struct page *page, struct free_area *area,
-		int migratetype)
+bool shuffle_pick_tail(void)
 {
 	static u64 rand;
 	static u8 rand_bits;
+	bool ret;
 
 	/*
 	 * The lack of locking is deliberate. If 2 threads race to
@@ -198,10 +198,10 @@ void add_to_free_area_random(struct page *page, struct free_area *area,
 		rand = get_random_u64();
 	}
 
-	if (rand & 1)
-		add_to_free_area(page, area, migratetype);
-	else
-		add_to_free_area_tail(page, area, migratetype);
+	ret = rand & 1;
+
 	rand_bits--;
 	rand >>= 1;
+
+	return ret;
 }
diff --git a/mm/shuffle.h b/mm/shuffle.h
index 777a257a0d2f..4d79f03b6658 100644
--- a/mm/shuffle.h
+++ b/mm/shuffle.h
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ enum mm_shuffle_ctl {
 DECLARE_STATIC_KEY_FALSE(page_alloc_shuffle_key);
 extern void page_alloc_shuffle(enum mm_shuffle_ctl ctl);
 extern void __shuffle_free_memory(pg_data_t *pgdat);
+extern bool shuffle_pick_tail(void);
 static inline void shuffle_free_memory(pg_data_t *pgdat)
 {
 	if (!static_branch_unlikely(&page_alloc_shuffle_key))
@@ -44,6 +45,11 @@ static inline bool is_shuffle_order(int order)
 	return order >= SHUFFLE_ORDER;
 }
 #else
+static inline bool shuffle_pick_tail(void)
+{
+	return false;
+}
+
 static inline void shuffle_free_memory(pg_data_t *pgdat)
 {
 }