Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm/pageblock: remove false sharing in pageblock_flags

[Alex Shi <alex.shi@linux.alibaba.com>]

在 2020/8/16 下午11:56, Alexander Duyck 写道:
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 7:11 AM Alex Shi <alex.shi@linux.alibaba.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 在 2020/8/16 下午12:17, Matthew Wilcox 写道:
>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 11:47:57AM +0800, Alex Shi wrote:
>>>> Current pageblock_flags is only 4 bits, so it has to share a char size
>>>> in cmpxchg when get set, the false sharing cause perf drop.
>>>>
>>>> If we incrase the bits up to 8, false sharing would gone in cmpxchg. and
>>>> the only cost is half char per pageblock, which is half char per 128MB
>>>> on x86, 4 chars in 1 GB.
>>>
>>> I don't believe this patch has that effect, mostly because it still does
>>> cmpxchg() on words instead of bytes.
>>
>> Hi Matthew,
>>
>> Thank a lot for comments!
>>
>> Sorry, I must overlook sth, would you like point out why the cmpxchg is still
>> on words after patch 1 applied?
>>
> 
> I would take it one step further. You still have false sharing as the
> pageblocks bits still occupy the same cacheline so you are going to
> see them cache bouncing regardless.

Right, there 2 level false sharing here, cacheline and cmpxchg comparsion range.
this patch could fix the cmpxchg level with a very cheap price.
the cacheline size is too huge to resovle here.

> 
> What it seems like you are attempting to address is the fact that
> multiple threads could all be attempting to update the same long
> value. As I pointed out for the migrate type it seems to be protected
> by the zone lock, but for compaction the skip bit doesn't have the
> same protection as there are some threads using the zone lock and
> others using the LRU lock. I'm still not sure it makes much of a
> difference though.

It looks with this patch, lock are not needed anymore on the flags.

> 
>>>
>>> But which functions would benefit?  It seems to me this cmpxchg() is
>>> only called from the set_pageblock_migratetype() morass of functions,
>>> none of which are called in hot paths as far as I can make out.
>>>
>>> So are you just reasoning by analogy with the previous patch where you
>>> have measured a performance improvement, or did you send the wrong patch,
>>> or did I overlook a hot path that calls one of the pageblock migration
>>> functions?
>>>
>>
>> Uh, I am reading compaction.c and found the following commit introduced
>> test_and_set_skip under a lock. It looks like the pagelock_flags setting
>> has false sharing in cmpxchg. but I have no valid data on this yet.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Alex
>>
>> e380bebe4771548  mm, compaction: keep migration source private to a single compaction instance
>>
>>                 if (!locked) {
>>                         locked = compact_trylock_irqsave(zone_lru_lock(zone),
>>                                                                 &flags, cc);
>> -                       if (!locked)
>> +
>> +                       /* Allow future scanning if the lock is contended */
>> +                       if (!locked) {
>> +                               clear_pageblock_skip(page);
>>                                 break;
>> +                       }
>> +
>> +                       /* Try get exclusive access under lock */
>> +                       if (!skip_updated) {
>> +                               skip_updated = true;
>> +                               if (test_and_set_skip(cc, page, low_pfn))
>> +                                       goto isolate_abort;
>> +                       }
>>
> 
> I'm not sure that is a good grounds for doubling the size of the
> pageblock flags. If you look further down in the code there are bits
> that are setting these bits without taking the lock. The assumption
> here is that by taking the lock the test_and_set_skip will be
> performed atomically since another thread cannot perform that while
> the zone lock is held. If you look in the function itself it only does
> anything if the skip bits are checked and if the page is the first
> page in the pageblock.
> 
> I think you might be confusing some of my earlier comments. I still
> believe the 3% regression you reported with my patch is not directly
> related to the test_and_set_skip as the test you ran seems unlikely to
> trigger compaction. However with that said one of the advantages of
> using the locked section to perform these types of tests is that it
> reduces the number of times the test is run since it will only be on
> the first unlocked page in any batch of pages and the first page in
> the pageblock is always going to be handled without the lock held
> since it is the first page processed.
> 
> Until we can get a test up such as thpscale that does a good job of
> stressing the compaction code I don't think we can rely on just
> observations to say if this is an improvement or not.

I still struggle on thpscale meaningful running. But if the patch is 
clearly right in theory. Do we have to hang on a benchmark result?

Thanks
Alex