linux-kernel - [PATCH 00/10] mpt3sas and dmapool scalability

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Date:   Tue, 31 May 2022 14:11:16 -0400
From:   Tony Battersby <tonyb@...ernetics.com>
To:     linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     iommu@...ts.linux-foundation.org, kernel-team@...com,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Keith Busch <kbusch@...nel.org>,
        Andy Shevchenko <andy.shevchenko@...il.com>,
        Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@....com>,
        Tony Lindgren <tony@...mide.com>
Subject: [PATCH 00/10] mpt3sas and dmapool scalability

This patch series improves dmapool scalability by replacing linear scans
with red-black trees.

History:

In 2018 this patch series made it through 4 versions.  v1 used red-black
trees; v2 - v4 put the dma pool info directly into struct page and used
virt_to_page() to get at it.  v4 made a brief appearance in linux-next,
but it caused problems on non-x86 archs where virt_to_page() doesn't
work with dma_alloc_coherent, so it was reverted.  I was too busy at the
time to repost the red-black tree version, and I forgot about it until
now.  This version is based on the red-black trees of v1, but addressing
all the review comments I got at the time and with additional cleanup
patches.

Note that Keith Busch is also working on improving dmapool scalability,
so for now I would recommend not merging my scalability patches until
Keith's approach can be evaluated.  In the meantime, my patches can
serve as a benchmark comparison.  I also have a number of cleanup
patches in my series that could be useful on their own.

References:

v1
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/73ec1f52-d758-05df-fb6a-41d269e910d0@cybernetics.com/

v2
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/ec701153-fdc9-37f3-c267-f056159b4606@cybernetics.com/

v3
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/d48854ff-995d-228e-8356-54c141c32117@cybernetics.com/

v4
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/88395080-efc1-4e7b-f813-bb90c86d0745@cybernetics.com/

problem caused by virt_to_page()
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-kernel/20181206013054.GI6707@atomide.com/

Keith Busch's dmapool performance enhancements
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20220428202714.17630-1-kbusch@kernel.org/

Below is my original description of the motivation for these patches.

drivers/scsi/mpt3sas is running into a scalability problem with the
kernel's DMA pool implementation.  With a LSI/Broadcom SAS 9300-8i
12Gb/s HBA and max_sgl_entries=256, during modprobe, mpt3sas does the
equivalent of:

chain_dma_pool = dma_pool_create(size = 128);
for (i = 0; i < 373959; i++)
    {
    dma_addr[i] = dma_pool_alloc(chain_dma_pool);
    }

And at rmmod, system shutdown, or system reboot, mpt3sas does the
equivalent of:

for (i = 0; i < 373959; i++)
    {
    dma_pool_free(chain_dma_pool, dma_addr[i]);
    }
dma_pool_destroy(chain_dma_pool);

With this usage, both dma_pool_alloc() and dma_pool_free() exhibit
O(n^2) complexity, although dma_pool_free() is much worse due to
implementation details.  On my system, the dma_pool_free() loop above
takes about 9 seconds to run.  Note that the problem was even worse
before commit 74522a92bbf0 ("scsi: mpt3sas: Optimize I/O memory
consumption in driver."), where the dma_pool_free() loop could take ~30
seconds.

mpt3sas also has some other DMA pools, but chain_dma_pool is the only
one with so many allocations:

cat /sys/devices/pci0000:80/0000:80:07.0/0000:85:00.0/pools
(manually cleaned up column alignment)
poolinfo - 0.1
reply_post_free_array pool  1      21     192     1
reply_free pool             1      1      41728   1
reply pool                  1      1      1335296 1
sense pool                  1      1      970272  1
chain pool                  373959 386048 128     12064
reply_post_free pool        12     12     166528  12

The patches in this series improve the scalability of the DMA pool
implementation, which significantly reduces the running time of the
DMA alloc/free loops.  With the patches applied, "modprobe mpt3sas",
"rmmod mpt3sas", and system shutdown/reboot with mpt3sas loaded are
significantly faster.  Here are some benchmarks (of DMA alloc/free
only, not the entire modprobe/rmmod):

dma_pool_create() + dma_pool_alloc() loop, size = 128, count = 373959
  original:        350 ms ( 1x)
  dmapool patches:  18 ms (19x)

dma_pool_free() loop + dma_pool_destroy(), size = 128, count = 373959
  original:        8901 ms (   1x)
  dmapool patches:   19 ms ( 477x)