Use inline functions to access the per cpu bit. Intoduce the notion of
"freezing" a slab to make things more understandable.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
There is no user of destructors left. There is no reason why we should keep
checking for destructors calls in the slab allocators.
The RFC for this patch was discussed at
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=117882364330705&w=2
Destructors were mainly used for list management which required them to take a
spinlock. Taking a spinlock in a destructor is a bit risky since the slab
allocators may run the destructors anytime they decide a slab is no longer
needed.
Patch drops destructor support. Any attempt to use a destructor will BUG().
Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Acked-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
kmem_cache_create() was swapping ctor and dtor in calling find_mergeable():
though it caused no bug, and probably never would, even if destructors are
retained; but fix it so as not to generate anxiety ;)
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This was in SLUB in order to head off trouble while the nr_cpu_ids
functionality was not merged. Its merged now so no need to still have this.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Avoid atomic overhead in slab_alloc and slab_free
SLUB needs to use the slab_lock for the per cpu slabs to synchronize with
potential kfree operations. This patch avoids that need by moving all free
objects onto a lockless_freelist. The regular freelist continues to exist
and will be used to free objects. So while we consume the
lockless_freelist the regular freelist may build up objects.
If we are out of objects on the lockless_freelist then we may check the
regular freelist. If it has objects then we move those over to the
lockless_freelist and do this again. There is a significant savings in
terms of atomic operations that have to be performed.
We can even free directly to the lockless_freelist if we know that we are
running on the same processor. So this speeds up short lived objects.
They may be allocated and freed without taking the slab_lock. This is
particular good for netperf.
In order to maximize the effect of the new faster hotpath we extract the
hottest performance pieces into inlined functions. These are then inlined
into kmem_cache_alloc and kmem_cache_free. So hotpath allocation and
freeing no longer requires a subroutine call within SLUB.
[I am not sure that it is worth doing this because it changes the easy to
read structure of slub just to reduce atomic ops. However, there is
someone out there with a benchmark on 4 way and 8 way processor systems
that seems to show a 5% regression vs. Slab. Seems that the regression is
due to increased atomic operations use vs. SLAB in SLUB). I wonder if
this is applicable or discernable at all in a real workload?]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Currently the slab allocators contain callbacks into the page allocator to
perform the draining of pagesets on remote nodes. This requires SLUB to have
a whole subsystem in order to be compatible with SLAB. Moving node draining
out of the slab allocators avoids a section of code in SLUB.
Move the node draining so that is is done when the vm statistics are updated.
At that point we are already touching all the cachelines with the pagesets of
a processor.
Add a expire counter there. If we have to update per zone or global vm
statistics then assume that the pageset will require subsequent draining.
The expire counter will be decremented on each vm stats update pass until it
reaches zero. Then we will drain one batch from the pageset. The draining
will cause vm counter updates which will then cause another expiration until
the pcp is empty. So we will drain a batch every 3 seconds.
Note that remote node draining is a somewhat esoteric feature that is required
on large NUMA systems because otherwise significant portions of system memory
can become trapped in pcp queues. The number of pcp is determined by the
number of processors and nodes in a system. A system with 4 processors and 2
nodes has 8 pcps which is okay. But a system with 1024 processors and 512
nodes has 512k pcps with a high potential for large amount of memory being
caught in them.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
vmstat is currently using the cache reaper to periodically bring the
statistics up to date. The cache reaper does only exists in SLUB as a way to
provide compatibility with SLAB. This patch removes the vmstat calls from the
slab allocators and provides its own handling.
The advantage is also that we can use a different frequency for the updates.
Refreshing vm stats is a pretty fast job so we can run this every second and
stagger this by only one tick. This will lead to some overlap in large
systems. F.e a system running at 250 HZ with 1024 processors will have 4 vm
updates occurring at once.
However, the vm stats update only accesses per node information. It is only
necessary to stagger the vm statistics updates per processor in each node. Vm
counter updates occurring on distant nodes will not cause cacheline
contention.
We could implement an alternate approach that runs the first processor on each
node at the second and then each of the other processor on a node on a
subsequent tick. That may be useful to keep a large amount of the second free
of timer activity. Maybe the timer folks will have some feedback on this one?
[jirislaby@gmail.com: add missing break]
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Since nonboot CPUs are now disabled after tasks and devices have been
frozen and the CPU hotplug infrastructure is used for this purpose, we need
special CPU hotplug notifications that will help the CPU-hotplug-aware
subsystems distinguish normal CPU hotplug events from CPU hotplug events
related to a system-wide suspend or resume operation in progress. This
patch introduces such notifications and causes them to be used during
suspend and resume transitions. It also changes all of the
CPU-hotplug-aware subsystems to take these notifications into consideration
(for now they are handled in the same way as the corresponding "normal"
ones).
[oleg@tv-sign.ru: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Gautham R Shenoy <ego@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
No "blank" (or "*") line is allowed between the function name and lines for
it parameter(s).
Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
In some cases SLUB is creating uselessly slabs that are larger than
slub_max_order. Also the layout of some of the slabs was not satisfactory.
Go to an iterarive approach.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG can be used to switch off the debugging and sysfs components
of SLUB. Thus SLUB will be able to replace SLOB. SLUB can arrange objects in
a denser way than SLOB and the code size should be minimal without debugging
and sysfs support.
Note that CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG is materially different from CONFIG_SLAB_DEBUG.
CONFIG_SLAB_DEBUG is used to enable slab debugging in SLAB. SLUB enables
debugging via a boot parameter. SLUB debug code should always be present.
CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG can be modified in the embedded config section.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Move the tracking definitions and the check_valid_pointer() function away from
the debugging related functions.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Trace in both slab_alloc and slab_free has a lot of common code. Use a single
function for both.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This replaces the PageError() checking. DebugSlab is clearer and allows for
future changes to the page bit used. We also need it to support
CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Move the resiliency check into the SYSFS section after validate_slab that is
used by the resiliency check. This will avoid a forward declaration.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Scanning of objects happens in a number of functions. Consolidate that code.
DECLARE_BITMAP instead of coding the declaration for bitmaps.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Update comments throughout SLUB to reflect the new developments. Fix up
various awkward sentences.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Its only purpose was to bring some sort of symmetry to sysfs usage when
dealing with bootstrapping per cpu flushing. Since we do not time out slabs
anymore we have no need to run finish_bootstrap even without sysfs. Fold it
back into slab_sysfs_init and drop the initcall for the !SYFS case.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
We really do not need all this gaga there.
ksize gives us all the information we need to figure out if the object can
cope with the new size.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
We needlessly duplicate code. Also make check_valid_pointer inline.
Signed-off-by: Christoph LAemter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
If no redzoning is selected then we do not need padding before the next
object.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
SLUB currently assumes that the cacheline size is static. However, i386 f.e.
supports dynamic cache line size determination.
Use cache_line_size() instead of L1_CACHE_BYTES in the allocator.
That also explains the purpose of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN. So we will need to keep
that one around to allow dynamic aligning of objects depending on boot
determination of the cache line size.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: need to define it before we use it]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
The newly merged SLUB allocator patches had been generated before the
removal of "struct subsystem", and ended up applying fine, but wouldn't
build based on the current tree as a result.
Fix up that merge error - not that SLUB is likely really ready for
showtime yet, but at least I can fix the trivial stuff.
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
There is no user remaining and I have never seen any use of that flag.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
SLAB_CTOR atomic is never used which is no surprise since I cannot imagine
that one would want to do something serious in a constructor or destructor.
In particular given that the slab allocators run with interrupts disabled.
Actions in constructors and destructors are by their nature very limited
and usually do not go beyond initializing variables and list operations.
(The i386 pgd ctor and dtors do take a spinlock in constructor and
destructor..... I think that is the furthest we go at this point.)
There is no flag passed to the destructor so removing SLAB_CTOR_ATOMIC also
establishes a certain symmetry.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
I have never seen a use of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL. It is only supported by
SLAB.
I think its purpose was to have a callback after an object has been freed
to verify that the state is the constructor state again? The callback is
performed before each freeing of an object.
I would think that it is much easier to check the object state manually
before the free. That also places the check near the code object
manipulation of the object.
Also the SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL callback is only performed if the kernel was
compiled with SLAB debugging on. If there would be code in a constructor
handling SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL then it would have to be conditional on
SLAB_DEBUG otherwise it would just be dead code. But there is no such code
in the kernel. I think SLUB_DEBUG_INITIAL is too problematic to make real
use of, difficult to understand and there are easier ways to accomplish the
same effect (i.e. add debug code before kfree).
There is a related flag SLAB_CTOR_VERIFY that is frequently checked to be
clear in fs inode caches. Remove the pointless checks (they would even be
pointless without removeal of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL) from the fs constructors.
This is the last slab flag that SLUB did not support. Remove the check for
unimplemented flags from SLUB.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This patch was recently posted to lkml and acked by Pekka.
The flag SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN is
1. Never checked by SLAB at all.
2. A duplicate of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for SLUB
3. Fulfills the role of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for SLOB.
The only remaining use is in sparc64 and ppc64 and their use there
reflects some earlier role that the slab flag once may have had. If
its specified then SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN is also specified.
The flag is confusing, inconsistent and has no purpose.
Remove it.
Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Make sure that the check function really only check things and do not perform
activities. Extract the tracing and object seeding out of the two check
functions and place them into slab_alloc and slab_free
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
At kmem_cache_shrink check if we have any empty slabs on the partial
if so then remove them.
Also--as an anti-fragmentation measure--sort the partial slabs so that
the most fully allocated ones come first and the least allocated last.
The next allocations may fill up the nearly full slabs. Having the
least allocated slabs last gives them the maximum chance that their
remaining objects may be freed. Thus we can hopefully minimize the
partial slabs.
I think this is the best one can do in terms antifragmentation
measures. Real defragmentation (meaning moving objects out of slabs with
the least free objects to those that are almost full) can be implemted
by reverse scanning through the list produced here but that would mean
that we need to provide a callback at slab cache creation that allows
the deletion or moving of an object. This will involve slab API
changes, so defer for now.
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@skynet.ie>
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This patch enables listing the callers who allocated or freed objects in a
cache.
For example to list the allocators for kmalloc-128 do
cat /sys/slab/kmalloc-128/alloc_calls
7 sn_io_slot_fixup+0x40/0x700
7 sn_io_slot_fixup+0x80/0x700
9 sn_bus_fixup+0xe0/0x380
6 param_sysfs_setup+0xf0/0x280
276 percpu_populate+0xf0/0x1a0
19 __register_chrdev_region+0x30/0x360
8 expand_files+0x2e0/0x6e0
1 sys_epoll_create+0x60/0x200
1 __mounts_open+0x140/0x2c0
65 kmem_alloc+0x110/0x280
3 alloc_disk_node+0xe0/0x200
33 as_get_io_context+0x90/0x280
74 kobject_kset_add_dir+0x40/0x140
12 pci_create_bus+0x2a0/0x5c0
1 acpi_ev_create_gpe_block+0x120/0x9e0
41 con_insert_unipair+0x100/0x1c0
1 uart_open+0x1c0/0xba0
1 dma_pool_create+0xe0/0x340
2 neigh_table_init_no_netlink+0x260/0x4c0
6 neigh_parms_alloc+0x30/0x200
1 netlink_kernel_create+0x130/0x320
5 fz_hash_alloc+0x50/0xe0
2 sn_common_hubdev_init+0xd0/0x6e0
28 kernel_param_sysfs_setup+0x30/0x180
72 process_zones+0x70/0x2e0
cat /sys/slab/kmalloc-128/free_calls
558 <not-available>
3 sn_io_slot_fixup+0x600/0x700
84 free_fdtable_rcu+0x120/0x260
2 seq_release+0x40/0x60
6 kmem_free+0x70/0xc0
24 free_as_io_context+0x20/0x200
1 acpi_get_object_info+0x3a0/0x3e0
1 acpi_add_single_object+0xcf0/0x1e40
2 con_release_unimap+0x80/0x140
1 free+0x20/0x40
SLAB_STORE_USER must be enabled for a slab cache by either booting with
"slab_debug" or enabling user tracking specifically for the slab of interest.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
We leave a mininum of partial slabs on nodes when we search for
partial slabs on other node. Define a constant for that value.
Then modify slub to keep MIN_PARTIAL slabs around.
This avoids bad situations where a function frees the last object
in a slab (which results in the page being returned to the page
allocator) only to then allocate one again (which requires getting
a page back from the page allocator if the partial list was empty).
Keeping a couple of slabs on the partial list reduces overhead.
Empty slabs are added to the end of the partial list to insure that
partially allocated slabs are consumed first (defragmentation).
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This enables validation of slab. Validation means that all objects are
checked to see if there are redzone violations, if padding has been
overwritten or any pointers have been corrupted. Also checks the consistency
of slab counters.
Validation enables the detection of metadata corruption without the kernel
having to execute code that actually uses (allocs/frees) and object. It
allows one to make sure that the slab metainformation and the guard values
around an object have not been compromised.
A single slabcache can be checked by writing a 1 to the "validate" file.
i.e.
echo 1 >/sys/slab/kmalloc-128/validate
or use the slabinfo tool to check all slabs
slabinfo -v
Error messages will show up in the syslog.
Note that validation can only reach slabs that are on a list. This means that
we are usually restricted to partial slabs and active slabs unless
SLAB_STORE_USER is active which will build a full slab list and allows
validation of slabs that are fully in use. Booting with "slub_debug" set will
enable SLAB_STORE_USER and then full diagnostic are available.
Note that we attempt to push cpu slabs back to the lists when we start the
check. If the cpu slab is reactivated before we get to it (another processor
grabs it before we get to it) then it cannot be checked.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
If slab tracking is on then build a list of full slabs so that we can verify
the integrity of all slabs and are also able to built list of alloc/free
callers.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Object tracking did not work the right way for several call chains. Fix this up
by adding a new parameter to slub_alloc and slub_free that specifies the
caller address explicitly.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
If we add a new flag so that we can distinguish between the first page and the
tail pages then we can avoid to use page->private in the first page.
page->private == page for the first page, so there is no real information in
there.
Freeing up page->private makes the use of compound pages more transparent.
They become more usable like real pages. Right now we have to be careful f.e.
if we are going beyond PAGE_SIZE allocations in the slab on i386 because we
can then no longer use the private field. This is one of the issues that
cause us not to support debugging for page size slabs in SLAB.
Having page->private available for SLUB would allow more meta information in
the page struct. I can probably avoid the 16 bit ints that I have in there
right now.
Also if page->private is available then a compound page may be equipped with
buffer heads. This may free up the way for filesystems to support larger
blocks than page size.
We add PageTail as an alias of PageReclaim. Compound pages cannot currently
be reclaimed. Because of the alias one needs to check PageCompound first.
The RFC for the this approach was discussed at
http://marc.info/?t=117574302800001&r=1&w=2
[nacc@us.ibm.com: fix hugetlbfs]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Makes SLUB behave like SLAB in this area to avoid issues....
Throw a stack dump to alert people.
At some point the behavior should be switched back. NULL is no memory as
far as I can tell and if the use asked for 0 bytes then he need to get no
memory.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Structures may contain u64 items on 32 bit platforms that are only able to
address 64 bit items on 64 bit boundaries. Change the mininum alignment of
slabs to conform to those expectations.
ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN must be changed for good since a variety of structure
are mixed in the general slabs.
ARCH_SLAB_MINALIGN is changed because currently there is no consistent
specification of object alignment. We may have that in the future when the
KMEM_CACHE and related macros are used to generate slabs. These pass the
alignment of the structure generated by the compiler to the slab.
With KMEM_CACHE etc we could align structures that do not contain 64
bit values to 32 bit boundaries potentially saving some memory.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This is a new slab allocator which was motivated by the complexity of the
existing code in mm/slab.c. It attempts to address a variety of concerns
with the existing implementation.
A. Management of object queues
A particular concern was the complex management of the numerous object
queues in SLAB. SLUB has no such queues. Instead we dedicate a slab for
each allocating CPU and use objects from a slab directly instead of
queueing them up.
B. Storage overhead of object queues
SLAB Object queues exist per node, per CPU. The alien cache queue even
has a queue array that contain a queue for each processor on each
node. For very large systems the number of queues and the number of
objects that may be caught in those queues grows exponentially. On our
systems with 1k nodes / processors we have several gigabytes just tied up
for storing references to objects for those queues This does not include
the objects that could be on those queues. One fears that the whole
memory of the machine could one day be consumed by those queues.
C. SLAB meta data overhead
SLAB has overhead at the beginning of each slab. This means that data
cannot be naturally aligned at the beginning of a slab block. SLUB keeps
all meta data in the corresponding page_struct. Objects can be naturally
aligned in the slab. F.e. a 128 byte object will be aligned at 128 byte
boundaries and can fit tightly into a 4k page with no bytes left over.
SLAB cannot do this.
D. SLAB has a complex cache reaper
SLUB does not need a cache reaper for UP systems. On SMP systems
the per CPU slab may be pushed back into partial list but that
operation is simple and does not require an iteration over a list
of objects. SLAB expires per CPU, shared and alien object queues
during cache reaping which may cause strange hold offs.
E. SLAB has complex NUMA policy layer support
SLUB pushes NUMA policy handling into the page allocator. This means that
allocation is coarser (SLUB does interleave on a page level) but that
situation was also present before 2.6.13. SLABs application of
policies to individual slab objects allocated in SLAB is
certainly a performance concern due to the frequent references to
memory policies which may lead a sequence of objects to come from
one node after another. SLUB will get a slab full of objects
from one node and then will switch to the next.
F. Reduction of the size of partial slab lists
SLAB has per node partial lists. This means that over time a large
number of partial slabs may accumulate on those lists. These can
only be reused if allocator occur on specific nodes. SLUB has a global
pool of partial slabs and will consume slabs from that pool to
decrease fragmentation.
G. Tunables
SLAB has sophisticated tuning abilities for each slab cache. One can
manipulate the queue sizes in detail. However, filling the queues still
requires the uses of the spin lock to check out slabs. SLUB has a global
parameter (min_slab_order) for tuning. Increasing the minimum slab
order can decrease the locking overhead. The bigger the slab order the
less motions of pages between per CPU and partial lists occur and the
better SLUB will be scaling.
G. Slab merging
We often have slab caches with similar parameters. SLUB detects those
on boot up and merges them into the corresponding general caches. This
leads to more effective memory use. About 50% of all caches can
be eliminated through slab merging. This will also decrease
slab fragmentation because partial allocated slabs can be filled
up again. Slab merging can be switched off by specifying
slub_nomerge on boot up.
Note that merging can expose heretofore unknown bugs in the kernel
because corrupted objects may now be placed differently and corrupt
differing neighboring objects. Enable sanity checks to find those.
H. Diagnostics
The current slab diagnostics are difficult to use and require a
recompilation of the kernel. SLUB contains debugging code that
is always available (but is kept out of the hot code paths).
SLUB diagnostics can be enabled via the "slab_debug" option.
Parameters can be specified to select a single or a group of
slab caches for diagnostics. This means that the system is running
with the usual performance and it is much more likely that
race conditions can be reproduced.
I. Resiliency
If basic sanity checks are on then SLUB is capable of detecting
common error conditions and recover as best as possible to allow the
system to continue.
J. Tracing
Tracing can be enabled via the slab_debug=T,<slabcache> option
during boot. SLUB will then protocol all actions on that slabcache
and dump the object contents on free.
K. On demand DMA cache creation.
Generally DMA caches are not needed. If a kmalloc is used with
__GFP_DMA then just create this single slabcache that is needed.
For systems that have no ZONE_DMA requirement the support is
completely eliminated.
L. Performance increase
Some benchmarks have shown speed improvements on kernbench in the
range of 5-10%. The locking overhead of slub is based on the
underlying base allocation size. If we can reliably allocate
larger order pages then it is possible to increase slub
performance much further. The anti-fragmentation patches may
enable further performance increases.
Tested on:
i386 UP + SMP, x86_64 UP + SMP + NUMA emulation, IA64 NUMA + Simulator
SLUB Boot options
slub_nomerge Disable merging of slabs
slub_min_order=x Require a minimum order for slab caches. This
increases the managed chunk size and therefore
reduces meta data and locking overhead.
slub_min_objects=x Mininum objects per slab. Default is 8.
slub_max_order=x Avoid generating slabs larger than order specified.
slub_debug Enable all diagnostics for all caches
slub_debug=<options> Enable selective options for all caches
slub_debug=<o>,<cache> Enable selective options for a certain set of
caches
Available Debug options
F Double Free checking, sanity and resiliency
R Red zoning
P Object / padding poisoning
U Track last free / alloc
T Trace all allocs / frees (only use for individual slabs).
To use SLUB: Apply this patch and then select SLUB as the default slab
allocator.
[hugh@veritas.com: fix an oops-causing locking error]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: various stupid cleanups and small fixes]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
