linux-kernel - Re: [patch 5/5]thp: split huge page if head page is isolated

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Date:	Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:34:07 +0900
From:	Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>
To:	Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>
Cc:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, aarcange@...hat.com,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, mel <mel@....ul.ie>,
	KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@...fujitsu.com>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [patch 5/5]thp: split huge page if head page is isolated

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:59:40AM +0800, Shaohua Li wrote:
> With current logic, if page reclaim finds a huge page, it will just reclaim
> the head page and leave tail pages reclaimed later. Let's take an example,
> lru list has page A and B, page A is huge page:
> 1. page A is isolated
> 2. page B is isolated
> 3. shrink_page_list() adds page A to swap page cache. so page A is split.
> page A+1, page A+2, ... are added to lru list.
> 4. shrink_page_list() adds page B to swap page cache.
> 5. page A and B is written out and reclaimed.
> 6. page A+1, A+2 ... is isolated and reclaimed later.
> So the reclaim order is A, B, ...(maybe other pages), A+1, A+2 ...

I don't see your code yet but have a question.
You mitigate this problem by 4/5 which could add subpages into lru tail
so subpages would reclaim next interation of reclaim.

What do we need 5/5?
Do I miss something?

> 
> We expected the whole huge page A is reclaimed in the meantime, so
> the order is A, A+1, ... A+HPAGE_PMD_NR-1, B, ....
> 
> With this patch, we do huge page split just after the head page is isolated
> for inactive lru list, so the tail pages will be reclaimed immediately.
> 
> In a test, a range of anonymous memory is written and will trigger swap.
> Without the patch:
> #cat /proc/vmstat|grep thp
> thp_fault_alloc 451
> thp_fault_fallback 0
> thp_collapse_alloc 0
> thp_collapse_alloc_failed 0
> thp_split 238
> 
> With the patch:
> #cat /proc/vmstat|grep thp
> thp_fault_alloc 450
> thp_fault_fallback 1
> thp_collapse_alloc 0
> thp_collapse_alloc_failed 0
> thp_split 103
> 
> So the thp_split number is reduced a lot, though there is one extra
> thp_fault_fallback.

Wow. The result seems to be good.
Is it result of effect only 5/5? or both 4/5 and 5/5?

-- 
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim
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