linux-kernel - [PATCH 0/4] [RFC] Migrate Pages in lieu of discard

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Message-Id: <20191016221148.F9CCD155@viggo.jf.intel.com>
Date:   Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:11:48 -0700
From:   Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org, dan.j.williams@...el.com,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>
Subject: [PATCH 0/4] [RFC] Migrate Pages in lieu of discard

We're starting to see systems with more and more kinds of memory such
as Intel's implementation of persistent memory.

Let's say you have a system with some DRAM and some persistent memory.
Today, once DRAM fills up, reclaim will start and some of the DRAM
contents will be thrown out.  Allocations will, at some point, start
falling over to the slower persistent memory.

That has two nasty properties.  First, the newer allocations can end
up in the slower persistent memory.  Second, reclaimed data in DRAM
are just discarded even if there are gobs of space in persistent
memory that could be used.

This set implements a solution to these problems.  At the end of the
reclaim process in shrink_page_list() just before the last page
refcount is dropped, the page is migrated to persistent memory instead
of being dropped.

While I've talked about a DRAM/PMEM pairing, this approach would
function in any environment where memory tiers exist.

This is not perfect.  It "strands" pages in slower memory and never
brings them back to fast DRAM.  Other things need to be built to
promote hot pages back to DRAM.

This is part of a larger patch set.  If you want to apply these or
play with them, I'd suggest using the tree from here.  It includes
autonuma-based hot page promotion back to DRAM:

	http://lkml.kernel.org/r/c3d6de4d-f7c3-b505-2e64-8ee5f70b2118@intel.com

This is also all based on an upstream mechanism that allows
persistent memory to be onlined and used as if it were volatile:

	http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190124231441.37A4A305@viggo.jf.intel.com