linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 0/4] KVM: ioctl for populating guest

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Message-ID: <74cbda4a-7820-45a9-a1b2-139da9dae593@redhat.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 19:29:17 +0100
From: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To: kalyazin@...zon.com, pbonzini@...hat.com, corbet@....net,
 kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc: jthoughton@...gle.com, brijesh.singh@....com, michael.roth@....com,
 graf@...zon.de, jgowans@...zon.com, roypat@...zon.co.uk, derekmn@...zon.com,
 nsaenz@...zon.es, xmarcalx@...zon.com,
 Sean Christopherson <seanjc@...gle.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/4] KVM: ioctl for populating guest_memfd

On 20.11.24 18:21, Nikita Kalyazin wrote:
> 
> 
> On 20/11/2024 16:44, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>> If the problem is the "pagecache" overhead, then yes, it will be a
>>> harder nut to crack. But maybe there are some low-hanging fruits to
>>> optimize? Finding the main cause for the added overhead would be
>>> interesting.
> 
> Agreed, knowing the exact root cause would be really nice.
> 
>> Can you compare uffdio_copy() when using anonymous memory vs. shmem?
>> That's likely the best we could currently achieve with guest_memfd.
> 
> Yeah, I was doing that too. It was about ~28% slower in my setup, while
> with guest_memfd it was ~34% slower. 

I looked into uffdio_copy() for shmem and we still walk+modify page 
tables. In theory, we could try hacking that out: for filling the 
pagecache we would only need the vma properties, not the page table 
properties; that would then really resemble "only modify the pagecache".

That would likely resemble what we would expect with guest_memfd: work 
only on the pagecache and not the page tables. So it's rather surprising 
that guest_memfd is slower than that, as it currently doesn't mess with 
user page tables at all.

  The variance of the data was quite
> high so the difference may well be just noise.  In other words, I'd be
> much happier if we could bring guest_memfd (or even shmem) performance
> closer to the anon/private than if we just equalised guest_memfd with
> shmem (which are probably already pretty close).

Makes sense. Best we can do is:

anon: work only on page tables
shmem/guest_memfd: work only on pageacache

So at least "only one treelike structure to update".

-- 
Cheers,

David / dhildenb