linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] vfs: Enable list batching for the superblock's inode list

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Date:	Mon, 01 Feb 2016 16:44:02 -0500
From:	Waiman Long <waiman.long@....com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
CC:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, x86@...nel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	Scott J Norton <scott.norton@...com>,
	Douglas Hatch <doug.hatch@...com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] vfs: Enable list batching for the superblock's
 inode list

On 01/30/2016 03:35 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Waiman Long<Waiman.Long@....com>  wrote:
>
>> The inode_sb_list_add() and inode_sb_list_del() functions in the vfs
>> layer just perform list addition and deletion under lock. So they can
>> use the new list batching facility to speed up the list operations
>> when many CPUs are trying to do it simultaneously.
>>
>> In particular, the inode_sb_list_del() function can be a performance
>> bottleneck when large applications with many threads and associated
>> inodes exit. With an exit microbenchmark that creates a large number
>> of threads, attachs many inodes to them and then exits. The runtimes
>> of that microbenchmark with 1000 threads before and after the patch
>> on a 4-socket Intel E7-4820 v3 system (48 cores, 96 threads) were
>> as follows:
>>
>>    Kernel        Elapsed Time    System Time
>>    ------        ------------    -----------
>>    Vanilla 4.4      65.29s         82m14s
>>    Patched 4.4      45.69s         49m44s
>>
>> The elapsed time and the reported system time were reduced by 30%
>> and 40% respectively.
> That's pretty impressive!
>
> I'm wondering, why are inode_sb_list_add()/del() even called for a presumably
> reasonably well cached benchmark running on a system with enough RAM? Are these
> perhaps thousands of temporary files, already deleted, and released when all the
> file descriptors are closed as part of sys_exit()?

The inodes that need to be deleted were actually procfs files which have 
to go away when the processes/threads exit. I encountered this problem 
when running the SPECjbb2013 benchmark on large machine where sometimes 
it might seems to hang for 30 mins or so after the benchmark complete. I 
wrote a simple microbenchmark to simulate this situation which is in the 
attachment.


> If that's the case then I suspect an even bigger win would be not just to batch
> the (sb-)global list fiddling, but to potentially turn the sb list into a
> percpu_alloc() managed set of per CPU lists? It's a bigger change, but it could
> speed up a lot of other temporary file intensive usecases as well, not just
> batched delete.
>
> Thanks,
>
> 	Ingo

Yes, that can be another possible. I will investigate further on that 
one. Thanks for the suggestion.

Cheers,
Longman


View attachment "exit_test.c" of type "text/plain" (2666 bytes)