[PATCH 0/3] Removal of lumpy reclaim V2

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Wed Apr 11 2012 - 12:38:21 EST

Andrew, these three patches should replace the two lumpy reclaim patches
you already have. When applied, there is no functional difference (slightly
changes in layout) but the changelogs are better.

Changelog since V1
o Ying pointed out that compaction was waiting on page writeback and the
description of the patches in V1 was broken. This version is the same
except that it is structured differently to explain that waiting on
page writeback is removed.
o Rebased to v3.4-rc2

This series removes lumpy reclaim and some stalling logic that was
unintentionally being used by memory compaction. The end result
is that stalling on dirty pages during page reclaim now depends on
wait_iff_congested().

Four kernels were compared

3.3.0 vanilla
3.4.0-rc2 vanilla
3.4.0-rc2 lumpyremove-v2 is patch one from this series
3.4.0-rc2 nosync-v2r3 is the full series

Removing lumpy reclaim saves almost 900K of text where as the full series
removes 1200K of text.

text data bss dec hex filename
6740375 1927944 2260992 10929311 a6c49f vmlinux-3.4.0-rc2-vanilla
6739479 1927944 2260992 10928415 a6c11f vmlinux-3.4.0-rc2-lumpyremove-v2
6739159 1927944 2260992 10928095 a6bfdf vmlinux-3.4.0-rc2-nosync-v2

There are behaviour changes in the series and so tests were run with
monitoring of ftrace events. This disrupts results so the performance
results are distorted but the new behaviour should be clearer.

fs-mark running in a threaded configuration showed little of interest as
it did not push reclaim aggressively

FS-Mark Multi Threaded
3.3.0-vanilla rc2-vanilla lumpyremove-v2r3 nosync-v2r3
Files/s min 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%)
Files/s mean 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%)
Files/s stddev 0.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%) 0.00 ( 0.00%)
Files/s max 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%) 3.20 ( 0.00%)
Overhead min 508667.00 ( 0.00%) 521350.00 (-2.49%) 544292.00 (-7.00%) 547168.00 (-7.57%)
Overhead mean 551185.00 ( 0.00%) 652690.73 (-18.42%) 991208.40 (-79.83%) 570130.53 (-3.44%)
Overhead stddev 18200.69 ( 0.00%) 331958.29 (-1723.88%) 1579579.43 (-8578.68%) 9576.81 (47.38%)
Overhead max 576775.00 ( 0.00%) 1846634.00 (-220.17%) 6901055.00 (-1096.49%) 585675.00 (-1.54%)
MMTests Statistics: duration
Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 309.90 300.95 307.33 298.95
User+Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 319.32 309.67 315.69 307.51
Total Elapsed Time (seconds) 1187.85 1193.09 1191.98 1193.73

MMTests Statistics: vmstat
Page Ins 80532 82212 81420 79480
Page Outs 111434984 111456240 111437376 111582628
Swap Ins 0 0 0 0
Swap Outs 0 0 0 0
Direct pages scanned 44881 27889 27453 34843
Kswapd pages scanned 25841428 25860774 25861233 25843212
Kswapd pages reclaimed 25841393 25860741 25861199 25843179
Direct pages reclaimed 44881 27889 27453 34843
Kswapd efficiency 99% 99% 99% 99%
Kswapd velocity 21754.791 21675.460 21696.029 21649.127
Direct efficiency 100% 100% 100% 100%
Direct velocity 37.783 23.375 23.031 29.188
Percentage direct scans 0% 0% 0% 0%

ftrace showed that there was no stalling on writeback or pages submitted
for IO from reclaim context.


postmark was similar and while it was more interesting, it also did not
push reclaim heavily.

POSTMARK
3.3.0-vanilla rc2-vanilla lumpyremove-v2r3 nosync-v2r3
Transactions per second: 16.00 ( 0.00%) 20.00 (25.00%) 18.00 (12.50%) 17.00 ( 6.25%)
Data megabytes read per second: 18.80 ( 0.00%) 24.27 (29.10%) 22.26 (18.40%) 20.54 ( 9.26%)
Data megabytes written per second: 35.83 ( 0.00%) 46.25 (29.08%) 42.42 (18.39%) 39.14 ( 9.24%)
Files created alone per second: 28.00 ( 0.00%) 38.00 (35.71%) 34.00 (21.43%) 30.00 ( 7.14%)
Files create/transact per second: 8.00 ( 0.00%) 10.00 (25.00%) 9.00 (12.50%) 8.00 ( 0.00%)
Files deleted alone per second: 556.00 ( 0.00%) 1224.00 (120.14%) 3062.00 (450.72%) 6124.00 (1001.44%)
Files delete/transact per second: 8.00 ( 0.00%) 10.00 (25.00%) 9.00 (12.50%) 8.00 ( 0.00%)

MMTests Statistics: duration
Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 113.34 107.99 109.73 108.72
User+Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 145.51 139.81 143.32 143.55
Total Elapsed Time (seconds) 1159.16 899.23 980.17 1062.27

MMTests Statistics: vmstat
Page Ins 13710192 13729032 13727944 13760136
Page Outs 43071140 42987228 42733684 42931624
Swap Ins 0 0 0 0
Swap Outs 0 0 0 0
Direct pages scanned 0 0 0 0
Kswapd pages scanned 9941613 9937443 9939085 9929154
Kswapd pages reclaimed 9940926 9936751 9938397 9928465
Direct pages reclaimed 0 0 0 0
Kswapd efficiency 99% 99% 99% 99%
Kswapd velocity 8576.567 11051.058 10140.164 9347.109
Direct efficiency 100% 100% 100% 100%
Direct velocity 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

It looks like here that the full series regresses performance but as ftrace
showed no usage of wait_iff_congested() or sync reclaim I am assuming it's
a disruption due to monitoring. Other data such as memory usage, page IO,
swap IO all looked similar.

Running a benchmark with a plain DD showed nothing very interesting. The
full series stalled in wait_iff_congested() slightly less but stall times
on vanilla kernels were marginal.

Running a benchmark that hammered on file-backed mappings showed stalls
due to congestion but not in sync writebacks

MICRO
3.3.0-vanilla rc2-vanilla lumpyremove-v2r3 nosync-v2r3
MMTests Statistics: duration
Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 308.13 294.50 298.75 299.53
User+Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 330.45 316.28 318.93 320.79
Total Elapsed Time (seconds) 1814.90 1833.88 1821.14 1832.91

MMTests Statistics: vmstat
Page Ins 108712 120708 97224 110344
Page Outs 155514576 156017404 155813676 156193256
Swap Ins 0 0 0 0
Swap Outs 0 0 0 0
Direct pages scanned 2599253 1550480 2512822 2414760
Kswapd pages scanned 69742364 71150694 68839041 69692533
Kswapd pages reclaimed 34824488 34773341 34796602 34799396
Direct pages reclaimed 53693 94750 61792 75205
Kswapd efficiency 49% 48% 50% 49%
Kswapd velocity 38427.662 38797.901 37799.972 38022.889
Direct efficiency 2% 6% 2% 3%
Direct velocity 1432.174 845.464 1379.807 1317.446
Percentage direct scans 3% 2% 3% 3%
Page writes by reclaim 0 0 0 0
Page writes file 0 0 0 0
Page writes anon 0 0 0 0
Page reclaim immediate 0 0 0 1218
Page rescued immediate 0 0 0 0
Slabs scanned 15360 16384 13312 16384
Direct inode steals 0 0 0 0
Kswapd inode steals 4340 4327 1630 4323

FTrace Reclaim Statistics: congestion_wait
Direct number congest waited 0 0 0 0
Direct time congest waited 0ms 0ms 0ms 0ms
Direct full congest waited 0 0 0 0
Direct number conditional waited 900 870 754 789
Direct time conditional waited 0ms 0ms 0ms 20ms
Direct full conditional waited 0 0 0 0
KSwapd number congest waited 2106 2308 2116 1915
KSwapd time congest waited 139924ms 157832ms 125652ms 132516ms
KSwapd full congest waited 1346 1530 1202 1278
KSwapd number conditional waited 12922 16320 10943 14670
KSwapd time conditional waited 0ms 0ms 0ms 0ms
KSwapd full conditional waited 0 0 0 0


Reclaim statistics are not radically changed. The stall times in kswapd
are massive but it is clear that it is due to calls to congestion_wait()
and that is almost certainly the call in balance_pgdat(). Otherwise stalls
due to dirty pages are non-existant.

I ran a benchmark that stressed high-order allocation. This is very
artifical load but was used in the past to evaluate lumpy reclaim and
compaction. Generally I look at allocation success rates and latency figures.

STRESS-HIGHALLOC
3.3.0-vanilla rc2-vanilla lumpyremove-v2r3 nosync-v2r3
Pass 1 81.00 ( 0.00%) 28.00 (-53.00%) 24.00 (-57.00%) 28.00 (-53.00%)
Pass 2 82.00 ( 0.00%) 39.00 (-43.00%) 38.00 (-44.00%) 43.00 (-39.00%)
while Rested 88.00 ( 0.00%) 87.00 (-1.00%) 88.00 ( 0.00%) 88.00 ( 0.00%)

MMTests Statistics: duration
Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 740.93 681.42 685.14 684.87
User+Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 2922.65 3269.52 3281.35 3279.44
Total Elapsed Time (seconds) 1161.73 1152.49 1159.55 1161.44

MMTests Statistics: vmstat
Page Ins 4486020 2807256 2855944 2876244
Page Outs 7261600 7973688 7975320 7986120
Swap Ins 31694 0 0 0
Swap Outs 98179 0 0 0
Direct pages scanned 53494 57731 34406 113015
Kswapd pages scanned 6271173 1287481 1278174 1219095
Kswapd pages reclaimed 2029240 1281025 1260708 1201583
Direct pages reclaimed 1468 14564 16649 92456
Kswapd efficiency 32% 99% 98% 98%
Kswapd velocity 5398.133 1117.130 1102.302 1049.641
Direct efficiency 2% 25% 48% 81%
Direct velocity 46.047 50.092 29.672 97.306
Percentage direct scans 0% 4% 2% 8%
Page writes by reclaim 1616049 0 0 0
Page writes file 1517870 0 0 0
Page writes anon 98179 0 0 0
Page reclaim immediate 103778 27339 9796 17831
Page rescued immediate 0 0 0 0
Slabs scanned 1096704 986112 980992 998400
Direct inode steals 223 215040 216736 247881
Kswapd inode steals 175331 61548 68444 63066
Kswapd skipped wait 21991 0 1 0
THP fault alloc 1 135 125 134
THP collapse alloc 393 311 228 236
THP splits 25 13 7 8
THP fault fallback 0 0 0 0
THP collapse fail 3 5 7 7
Compaction stalls 865 1270 1422 1518
Compaction success 370 401 353 383
Compaction failures 495 869 1069 1135
Compaction pages moved 870155 3828868 4036106 4423626
Compaction move failure 26429 23865 29742 27514

Success rates are completely hosed for 3.4-rc2 which is almost certainly
due to [fe2c2a10: vmscan: reclaim at order 0 when compaction is enabled]. I
expected this would happen for kswapd and impair allocation success rates
(https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/1/25/166) but I did not anticipate this much
a difference: 80% less scanning, 37% less reclaim by kswapd

In comparison, reclaim/compaction is not aggressive and gives up easily
which is the intended behaviour. hugetlbfs uses __GFP_REPEAT and would be
much more aggressive about reclaim/compaction than THP allocations are. The
stress test above is allocating like neither THP or hugetlbfs but is much
closer to THP.

Mainline is now impaired in terms of high order allocation under heavy load
although I do not know to what degree as I did not test with __GFP_REPEAT.
Keep this in mind for bugs related to hugepage pool resizing, THP allocation
and high order atomic allocation failures from network devices.

In terms of congestion throttling, I see the following for this test

FTrace Reclaim Statistics: congestion_wait
Direct number congest waited 3 0 0 0
Direct time congest waited 0ms 0ms 0ms 0ms
Direct full congest waited 0 0 0 0
Direct number conditional waited 957 512 1081 1075
Direct time conditional waited 0ms 0ms 0ms 0ms
Direct full conditional waited 0 0 0 0
KSwapd number congest waited 36 4 3 5
KSwapd time congest waited 3148ms 400ms 300ms 500ms
KSwapd full congest waited 30 4 3 5
KSwapd number conditional waited 88514 197 332 542
KSwapd time conditional waited 4980ms 0ms 0ms 0ms
KSwapd full conditional waited 49 0 0 0

The "conditional waited" times are the most interesting as this is directly
impacted by the number of dirty pages encountered during scan. As lumpy
reclaim is no longer scanning contiguous ranges, it is finding fewer dirty
pages. This brings wait times from about 5 seconds to 0. kswapd itself is
still calling congestion_wait() so it'll still stall but it's a lot less.

In terms of the type of IO we were doing, I see this

FTrace Reclaim Statistics: mm_vmscan_writepage
Direct writes anon sync 0 0 0 0
Direct writes anon async 0 0 0 0
Direct writes file sync 0 0 0 0
Direct writes file async 0 0 0 0
Direct writes mixed sync 0 0 0 0
Direct writes mixed async 0 0 0 0
KSwapd writes anon sync 0 0 0 0
KSwapd writes anon async 91682 0 0 0
KSwapd writes file sync 0 0 0 0
KSwapd writes file async 822629 0 0 0
KSwapd writes mixed sync 0 0 0 0
KSwapd writes mixed async 0 0 0 0

In 3.2, kswapd was doing a bunch of async writes of pages but
reclaim/compaction was never reaching a point where it was doing sync
IO. This does not guarantee that reclaim/compaction was not calling
wait_on_page_writeback() but I would consider it unlikely. It indicates
that merging patches 2 and 3 to stop reclaim/compaction calling
wait_on_page_writeback() should be safe.

include/trace/events/vmscan.h | 40 ++-----
mm/vmscan.c | 263 ++++-------------------------------------
2 files changed, 37 insertions(+), 266 deletions(-)

--
1.7.9.2

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