Re: [PATCH v5 1/4] memcg: introduce per-memcg reclaim interface

[Davidlohr Bueso]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2022, Yosry Ahmed wrote:

> From: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Introduce a memcg interface to trigger memory reclaim on a memory cgroup.
>
> Use case: Proactive Reclaim
> ---------------------------
>
> A userspace proactive reclaimer can continuously probe the memcg to
> reclaim a small amount of memory. This gives more accurate and
> up-to-date workingset estimation as the LRUs are continuously
> sorted and can potentially provide more deterministic memory
> overcommit behavior. The memory overcommit controller can provide
> more proactive response to the changing behavior of the running
> applications instead of being reactive.
>
> A userspace reclaimer's purpose in this case is not a complete replacement
> for kswapd or direct reclaim, it is to proactively identify memory savings
> opportunities and reclaim some amount of cold pages set by the policy
> to free up the memory for more demanding jobs or scheduling new jobs.
>
> A user space proactive reclaimer is used in Google data centers.
> Additionally, Meta's TMO paper recently referenced a very similar
> interface used for user space proactive reclaim:
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3503222.3507731
>
> Benefits of a user space reclaimer:
> -----------------------------------
>
> 1) More flexible on who should be charged for the cpu of the memory
> reclaim. For proactive reclaim, it makes more sense to be centralized.
>
> 2) More flexible on dedicating the resources (like cpu). The memory
> overcommit controller can balance the cost between the cpu usage and
> the memory reclaimed.
>
> 3) Provides a way to the applications to keep their LRUs sorted, so,
> under memory pressure better reclaim candidates are selected. This also
> gives more accurate and uptodate notion of working set for an
> application.
>
> Why memory.high is not enough?
> ------------------------------
>
> - memory.high can be used to trigger reclaim in a memcg and can
>  potentially be used for proactive reclaim.
>  However there is a big downside in using memory.high. It can potentially
>  introduce high reclaim stalls in the target application as the
>  allocations from the processes or the threads of the application can hit
>  the temporary memory.high limit.
>
> - Userspace proactive reclaimers usually use feedback loops to decide
>  how much memory to proactively reclaim from a workload. The metrics
>  used for this are usually either refaults or PSI, and these metrics
>  will become messy if the application gets throttled by hitting the
>  high limit.
>
> - memory.high is a stateful interface, if the userspace proactive
>  reclaimer crashes for any reason while triggering reclaim it can leave
>  the application in a bad state.
>
> - If a workload is rapidly expanding, setting memory.high to proactively
>  reclaim memory can result in actually reclaiming more memory than
>  intended.
>
> The benefits of such interface and shortcomings of existing interface
> were further discussed in this RFC thread:
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/5df21376-7dd1-bf81-8414-32a73cea45dd@xxxxxxxxxx/
>
> Interface:
> ----------
>
> Introducing a very simple memcg interface 'echo 10M > memory.reclaim' to
> trigger reclaim in the target memory cgroup.
>
> The interface is introduced as a nested-keyed file to allow for future
> optional arguments to be easily added to configure the behavior of
> reclaim.
>
> Possible Extensions:
> --------------------
>
> - This interface can be extended with an additional parameter or flags
>  to allow specifying one or more types of memory to reclaim from (e.g.
>  file, anon, ..).
>
> - The interface can also be extended with a node mask to reclaim from
>  specific nodes. This has use cases for reclaim-based demotion in memory
>  tiering systens.
>
> - A similar per-node interface can also be added to support proactive
>  reclaim and reclaim-based demotion in systems without memcg.
>
> - Add a timeout parameter to make it easier for user space to call the
>  interface without worrying about being blocked for an undefined amount
>  of time.
>
> For now, let's keep things simple by adding the basic functionality.
>
> [yosryahmed@xxxxxxxxxx: worked on versions v2 onwards, refreshed to
> current master, updated commit message based on recent
> discussions and use cases]
>
> Signed-off-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Co-developed-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Wei Xu <weixugc@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@xxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx>