linux-kernel - Re: [RFC][PATCH] ipc: Remove IPCMNI

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Date:   Thu, 29 Mar 2018 13:52:25 -0500
From:   ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:     Manfred Spraul <manfred@...orfullife.com>
Cc:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Davidlohr Bueso <dave@...olabs.net>,
        Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com>,
        Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@...il.com>,
        "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...nel.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Stanislav Kinsbursky <skinsbursky@...allels.com>,
        Linux Containers <containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org>,
        linux-api@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] ipc: Remove IPCMNI

Manfred Spraul <manfred@...orfullife.com> writes:

> Hello Mathew,
>
> On 03/29/2018 12:56 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 10:47:45AM +0200, Manfred Spraul wrote:
>>>>>>>> This can be implemented trivially with the current code
>>>>>>>> using idr_alloc_cyclic.
>>> Is there a performance impact?
>>> Right now, the idr tree is only large if there are lots of objects.
>>> What happens if we have only 1 object, with id=INT_MAX-1?
>> The radix tree uses a branching factor of 64 entries (6 bits) per level.
>> The maximum ID is 31 bits (positive signed 32-bit integer).  So the
>> worst case for a single object is 6 pointer dereferences to find the
>> object anywhere in the range (INT_MAX/2 - INT_MAX].  That will read 12
>> cachelines.  If we were to constrain ourselves to a maximum of INT_MAX/2
>> (30 bits), we'd reduce that to 5 pointer dereferences and 10 cachelines.
> I'm concerned about the up to 6 branches.
> But this is just guessing, we need a test with a realistic workload.

Yes.

My primary purpose with the patch was to show that the issues with the
current limits could be resolved in a straght forward manner.  I really
don't know if idrs are the appropriate data structure.  It is possible
rbtrees are a better fit.

I think my algorithm I proposed for generating identifiers is as likely
as any to be a good one.  It does need testing on a wide variety of
applications to see what applications actually care about and for that I
think my proposed patch is more than sufficient.

By not keeping a generation counters in the slots themselves linux
already differs substantially from traditional implementations.

Doing something to free us from using a fixed number of bits for the
counter and a fixed number of bits to encode the slot we can support
much larger use of this API.

Eric