linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2] Document /proc/pid PID reuse behavior

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Date:   Thu, 8 Nov 2018 06:07:07 -0800
From:   Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
To:     David Laight <David.Laight@...LAB.COM>
Cc:     'Martin Steigerwald' <martin@...htvoll.de>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
        Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "rppt@...ux.ibm.com" <rppt@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Tim Murray <timmurray@...gle.com>,
        Joel Fernandes <joelaf@...gle.com>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Roman Gushchin <guro@...com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        "Dennis Zhou (Facebook)" <dennisszhou@...il.com>,
        Prashant Dhamdhere <pdhamdhe@...hat.com>,
        "open list:DOCUMENTATION" <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Document /proc/pid PID reuse behavior

On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 01:42:41PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> From: Matthew Wilcox
> > On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 12:02:49PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> > > This can be mitigated by only allocating 'big' numbers on systems
> > > that have a lot of pids.
> > > You also really want an O(1) allocator.
> > 
> > The allocator is O(log n) -- it's the IDR allocator, used in cyclic mode.
> > n in this case is the highest ID which is still in use.  The tree is
> > log_64(n) levels high.  It walks to the bottom of the tree and puts a
> > pointer into the tree.  If the cursor has wrapped to the beginning of
> > the tree, it may encounter a PID which is still in use; if it does,
> > it does a bitmap scan of that node, and will then walk up the tree,
> > doing a bitmap scan forward at each level until it finds a free PID.
> 
> Right, but you can choose the pid so that you get a perfect hash.
> You can then put a FIFO free list through the unused entries of
> the hash table (just an array).
> Then pid allocate just picks the oldest free entry and ups the
> high bits (that the hash masks out) to make the old value stale.
> Almost no cache lines are involved in the whole operation.

You'd be looking for something like dynamic perfect hashing then?
I think that'd make a great project for someone to try out.  I don't
have the time to look into it myself, and I'm not convinced there's
a real workload that would benefit.  But it'd be a great project for
a university student.