Re: [RFC PATCH v1 3/7] mm: Hot page tracking and promotion

[Huang, Ying]

Bharata B Rao <bharata@xxxxxxx> writes:

> This introduces a sub-system for collecting memory access
> information from different sources. It maintains the hotness
> information based on the access history and time of access.
>
> Additionally, it provides per-lowertier-node kernel threads
> (named kpromoted) that periodically promote the pages that
> are eligible for promotion.
>
> Sub-systems that generate hot page access info can report that
> using this API:
>
> int pghot_record_access(u64 pfn, int nid, int src,
> 			unsigned long time)
>
> @pfn: The PFN of the memory accessed
> @nid: The accessing NUMA node ID
> @src: The temperature source (sub-system) that generated the
>       access info
> @time: The access time in jiffies

How will the page hotness information gather with NUMA balancing hint
page fault be expressed with this interface?

> Some temperature sources may not provide the nid from which
> the page was accessed. This is true for sources that use
> page table scanning for PTE Accessed bit. For such sources,
> the default toptier node to which such pages should be promoted
> is hard coded.
>
> Also, the access time provided some sources may at best be
> considered approximate. This is especially true for hot pages
> detected by PTE A bit scanning.
>
> The hot PFN records are stored in hash lists hashed by PFN value.
> The PFN records that are categorized as hot enough to be promoted
> are maintained in a per-lowertier-node max heap from which
> kpromoted extracts and promotes them.
>
> Each record stores the following info:
>
> struct pghot_info {
> 	unsigned long pfn;
>
> 	unsigned long last_update; /* Most recent access time */
> 	int frequency; /* Number of accesses within current window */
> 	int nid; /* Most recent access from this node */
>
> 	struct hlist_node hnode;
> 	size_t heap_idx; /* Position in max heap for quick retreival */
> };
>
> The way in which a page is categorized as hot enough to be
> promoted is pretty primitive now.
>

[snip]

---
Best Regards,
Huang, Ying