linux-kernel - Re: [patch] SLQB slab allocator

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Date:	Tue, 3 Feb 2009 12:33:14 -0500 (EST)
From:	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
cc:	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>,
	"Zhang, Yanmin" <yanmin_zhang@...ux.intel.com>,
	Lin Ming <ming.m.lin@...el.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [patch] SLQB slab allocator

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Nick Piggin wrote:

> Quite obviously it should. Behaviour of a slab allocation on behalf of
> some task constrained within a given node should not depend on the task
> which has previously run on this CPU and made some allocations. Surely
> you can see this behaviour is not nice.

If you want cache hot objects then its better to use what a prior task
has used. This opportunistic use is only done if the task is not asking
for memory from a specifc node. There is another tradeoff here.

SLABs method there is to ignore all caching advantages even if the task
did not ask for memory from a specific node. So it gets cache cold objects
and if the node to allow from is remote then it always must use the slow
path.

> > Which have similar issues since memory policy application is depending on
> > a task policy and on memory migration that has been applied to an address
> > range.
>
> What similar issues? If a task ask to have slab allocations constrained
> to node 0, then SLUB hands out objects from other nodes, then that's bad.

Of course. A task can ask to have allocations from node 0 and it will get
the object from node 0. But if the task does not care to ask for data
from a specific node then it can be satisfied from the cpu slab which
contains cache hot objects.

> > > But that is wrong. The lists obviously have high water marks that
> > > get trimmed down. Periodic trimming as I keep saying basically is
> > > alrady so infrequent that it is irrelevant (millions of objects
> > > per cpu can be allocated anyway between existing trimming interval)
> >
> > Trimming through water marks and allocating memory from the page allocator
> > is going to be very frequent if you continually allocate on one processor
> > and free on another.
>
> Um yes, that's the point. But you previously claimed that it would just
> grow unconstrained. Which is obviously wrong. So I don't understand what
> your point is.

It will grow unconstrained if you elect to defer queue processing. That
was what we discussed.
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