Message-ID: <3d539f31-5fa9-b6c5-b25a-3e6bd3ae660e@arm.com>
Date:   Thu, 22 Oct 2020 12:21:27 +0100
From:   Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@....com>
To:     Vanshi Konda <vanshikonda@...amperecomputing.com>
Cc:     Jonathan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@...wei.com>,
        Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@....com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, patches@...erecomputing.com,
        Valentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@....com>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] arm64: NUMA: Kconfig: Increase max number of nodes

On 2020-10-22 02:07, Vanshi Konda wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 12:44:15AM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:
>> On 2020-10-21 12:02, Jonathan Cameron wrote:
>>> On Wed, 21 Oct 2020 09:43:21 +0530
>>> Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@....com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/20/2020 11:39 PM, Valentin Schneider wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> Nit on the subject: this only increases the default, the max is 
>>>>> still 2?????.
>>>>
>>>> Agreed.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 20/10/20 18:34, Vanshidhar Konda wrote:
>>>>>> The current arm64 max NUMA nodes default to 4. Today's arm64 
>>>>>> systems can
>>>>>> reach or exceed 16. Increase the number to 64 (matching x86_64).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Signed-off-by: Vanshidhar Konda <vanshikonda@...amperecomputing.com>
>>>>>> ---
>>>>>>  arch/arm64/Kconfig | 2 +-
>>>>>>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/Kconfig b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
>>>>>> index 893130ce1626..3e69d3c981be 100644
>>>>>> --- a/arch/arm64/Kconfig
>>>>>> +++ b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
>>>>>> @@ -980,7 +980,7 @@ config NUMA
>>>>>>  config NODES_SHIFT
>>>>>>       int "Maximum NUMA Nodes (as a power of 2)"
>>>>>>       range 1 10
>>>>>> -    default "2"
>>>>>> +    default "6"
>>>>>
>>>>> This leads to more statically allocated memory for things like node 
>>>>> to CPU
>>>>> maps (see uses of MAX_NUMNODES), but that shouldn't be too much of an
>>>>> issue.
>>>>
>>>> The smaller systems should not be required to waste those memory in
>>>> a default case, unless there is a real and available larger system
>>>> with those increased nodes.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> AIUI this also directly correlates to how many more page->flags 
>>>>> bits are
>>>>> required: are we sure the max 10 works on any aarch64 platform? I'm
>>>>
>>>> We will have to test that. Besides 256 (2 ^ 8) is the first threshold
>>>> to be crossed here.
>>>>
>>>>> genuinely asking here, given that I'm mostly a stranger to the mm
>>>>> world. The default should be something we're somewhat confident works
>>>>> everywhere.
>>>>
>>>> Agreed. Do we really need to match X86 right now ? Do we really have
>>>> systems that has 64 nodes ? We should not increase the default node
>>>> value and then try to solve some new problems, when there might not
>>>> be any system which could even use that. I would suggest increase
>>>> NODES_SHIFT value upto as required by a real and available system.
>>>
>>> I'm not going to give precise numbers on near future systems but it 
>>> is public
>>> that we ship 8 NUMA node ARM64 systems today.  Things will get more
>>> interesting as CXL and CCIX enter the market on ARM systems,
>>> given chances are every CXL device will look like another NUMA
>>> node (CXL spec says they should be presented as such) and you
>>> may be able to rack up lots of them.
>>>
>>> So I'd argue minimum that makes sense today is 16 nodes, but looking 
>>> forward
>>> even a little and 64 is not a great stretch.
>>> I'd make the jump to 64 so we can forget about this again for a year 
>>> or two.
>>> People will want to run today's distros on these new machines and we'd
>>> rather not have to go around all the distros asking them to carry a 
>>> patch
>>> increasing this count (I assume they are already carrying such a patch
>>> due to those 8 node systems)
> 
> To echo Jonathan's statement above we are looking at systems that will
> need approximately 64 NUMA nodes over the next 5-6 years - the time for
> which an LTS kernel would be maintained. Some of the reason's for
> increasing NUMA nodes during this time period include CXL, CCIX and
> NVDIMM (like Jonathan pointed out).
> 
> The main argument against increasing the NODES_SHIFT seems to be a
> concern that it negatively impacts other ARM64 systems. Could anyone
> share what kind of systems we are talking about? For a system that has
> NEED_MULTIPLE_NODES set, would the impact be noticeable?

Systems like the ESPRESSObin - sure, sane people aren't trying to run 
desktops or development environments in 1GB of RAM, but it's not 
uncommon for them to use a minimal headless install of their favourite 
generic arm64 distro rather than something more "embedded" like OpenWrt 
or Armbian. Increasing a generic kernel's memory footprint (and perhaps 
more importantly, cache footprint) more than necessary is going to have 
*some* impact.

Robin.

> 
> Vanshi
> 
>>
>> Nit: I doubt any sane distro is going to carry a patch to adjust the 
>> *default* value of a Kconfig option. They might tune the actual value 
>> in their config, but, well, isn't that the whole point of configs? ;)
>>
>> Robin.
>>
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>       depends on NEED_MULTIPLE_NODES
>>>>>>       help
>>>>>>         Specify the maximum number of NUMA Nodes available on the 
>>>>>> target
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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