linux-kernel - Regression seen when using MADV_FREE vs MADV

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Date:   Sat, 21 Dec 2019 10:25:43 -0800
From:   Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>
To:     linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Regression seen when using MADV_FREE vs MADV_DONTNEED

In v15 of my patch set which can be found here
(https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20191205161928.19548.41654.stgit@localhost.localdomain/)
I had introduced an RFC patch that used MADV_FREE in QEMU instead of
MADV_DONTNEED. When testing that I had used a next-20191120 kernel on
the host. When preparing the numbers for my latest version I had
updated the host to next-20191219, and that is where I encountered an
issue where MADV_FREE is significantly slower than MADV_DONTNEED when
used to report the pages from the QEMU to the kernel and then
eventually fault them back into the guest. No regression was seen with
MADV_DONTNEED.

I just wanted to put it out there that it looks like something has
added spinlock overhead as high as 60% for 16 cores using MADV_FREE to
notify the system that a given transparent huge page isn't needed, and
then eventually faulting the memory back in. I'll try to bisect this
as time permits, but just thought I would put this out there in case
somebody has already found something similar and gotten root cause.

Thanks.

- Alex