Re: [PATCH v2 RESEND update 1/2] mm/page_alloc: free order-0 pages through PCP in page_frag_free()

From: Pankaj Gupta
Date: Tue Nov 20 2018 - 04:42:13 EST



>
> page_frag_free() calls __free_pages_ok() to free the page back to
> Buddy. This is OK for high order page, but for order-0 pages, it
> misses the optimization opportunity of using Per-Cpu-Pages and can
> cause zone lock contention when called frequently.
>
> PaweÅ Staszewski recently shared his result of 'how Linux kernel
> handles normal traffic'[1] and from perf data, Jesper Dangaard Brouer
> found the lock contention comes from page allocator:
>
> mlx5e_poll_tx_cq
> |
> --16.34%--napi_consume_skb
> |
> |--12.65%--__free_pages_ok
> | |
> | --11.86%--free_one_page
> | |
> | |--10.10%--queued_spin_lock_slowpath
> | |
> | --0.65%--_raw_spin_lock
> |
> |--1.55%--page_frag_free
> |
> --1.44%--skb_release_data
>
> Jesper explained how it happened: mlx5 driver RX-page recycle
> mechanism is not effective in this workload and pages have to go
> through the page allocator. The lock contention happens during
> mlx5 DMA TX completion cycle. And the page allocator cannot keep
> up at these speeds.[2]
>
> I thought that __free_pages_ok() are mostly freeing high order
> pages and thought this is an lock contention for high order pages
> but Jesper explained in detail that __free_pages_ok() here are
> actually freeing order-0 pages because mlx5 is using order-0 pages
> to satisfy its page pool allocation request.[3]
>
> The free path as pointed out by Jesper is:
> skb_free_head()
> -> skb_free_frag()
> -> page_frag_free()
> And the pages being freed on this path are order-0 pages.
>
> Fix this by doing similar things as in __page_frag_cache_drain() -
> send the being freed page to PCP if it's an order-0 page, or
> directly to Buddy if it is a high order page.
>
> With this change, PaweÅ hasn't noticed lock contention yet in
> his workload and Jesper has noticed a 7% performance improvement
> using a micro benchmark and lock contention is gone. Ilias' test
> on a 'low' speed 1Gbit interface on an cortex-a53 shows ~11%
> performance boost testing with 64byte packets and __free_pages_ok()
> disappeared from perf top.
>
> [1]: https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg531362.html
> [2]: https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg531421.html
> [3]: https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg531556.html
>
> Reported-by: PaweÅ Staszewski <pstaszewski@xxxxxxxxx>
> Analysed-by: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Ilias Apalodimas <ilias.apalodimas@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Tested-by: Ilias Apalodimas <ilias.apalodimas@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Tariq Toukan <tariqt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Aaron Lu <aaron.lu@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> update: fix Tariq's email tag.
>
> mm/page_alloc.c | 10 ++++++++--
> 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index 421c5b652708..8f8c6b33b637 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -4677,8 +4677,14 @@ void page_frag_free(void *addr)
> {
> struct page *page = virt_to_head_page(addr);
>
> - if (unlikely(put_page_testzero(page)))
> - __free_pages_ok(page, compound_order(page));
> + if (unlikely(put_page_testzero(page))) {
> + unsigned int order = compound_order(page);
> +
> + if (order == 0)
> + free_unref_page(page);
> + else
> + __free_pages_ok(page, order);
> + }
> }
> EXPORT_SYMBOL(page_frag_free);
>
> --
> 2.17.2

A good optimization for zero order allocations.
Acked-by: Pankaj gupta <pagupta@xxxxxxxxxx>

Thanks,
Pankaj