linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] Reduce vm_stat cacheline contention in __vm_enough

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Message-ID: <20111014122506.GB26737@sgi.com>
Date:	Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:25:06 -0500
From:	Dimitri Sivanich <sivanich@....com>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Christoph Lameter <cl@...two.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Reduce vm_stat cacheline contention in
 __vm_enough_memory

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 02:24:34PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:02:58 -0500 (CDT)
> Christoph Lameter <cl@...two.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 13 Oct 2011, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > 
> > > > If there are no updates occurring for a while (due to increased deltas
> > > > and/or vmstat updates) then the vm_stat cacheline should be able to stay
> > > > in shared mode in multiple processors and the performance should increase.
> > > >
> > >
> > > We could cacheline align vm_stat[].  But the thing is pretty small - we
> > > couild put each entry in its own cacheline.
> > 
> > Which in turn would increase the cache footprint of some key kernel
> > functions (because they need multiple vm_stat entries) and cause eviction
> > of other cachelines that then reduce overall system performance again.
> 
> Sure, but we gain performance by not having different CPUs treading on
> each other when they update different vmstat fields.  Sometimes one
> effect will win and other times the other effect will win.  Some
> engineering is needed..

I think the first step is to determine the role (if any) that false sharing may be playing in this, since that's a simpler fix (cacheline align and pad the array).

Then, if necessary, will look at contention issues within the array.
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