0day robot reported a 9.2% regression for will-it-scale mmap1 test
case[1], caused by commit 57efa1fe59 ("mm/gup: prevent gup_fast from
racing with COW during fork").
Further debug shows the regression is due to that commit changes the
offset of hot fields 'mmap_lock' inside structure 'mm_struct', thus some
cache alignment changes.
From the perf data, the contention for 'mmap_lock' is very severe and
takes around 95% cpu cycles, and it is a rw_semaphore
struct rw_semaphore {
atomic_long_t count; /* 8 bytes */
atomic_long_t owner; /* 8 bytes */
struct optimistic_spin_queue osq; /* spinner MCS lock */
...
Before commit 57efa1fe59 adds the 'write_protect_seq', it happens to
have a very optimal cache alignment layout, as Linus explained:
"and before the addition of the 'write_protect_seq' field, the
mmap_sem was at offset 120 in 'struct mm_struct'.
Which meant that count and owner were in two different cachelines,
and then when you have contention and spend time in
rwsem_down_write_slowpath(), this is probably *exactly* the kind
of layout you want.
Because first the rwsem_write_trylock() will do a cmpxchg on the
first cacheline (for the optimistic fast-path), and then in the
case of contention, rwsem_down_write_slowpath() will just access
the second cacheline.
Which is probably just optimal for a load that spends a lot of
time contended - new waiters touch that first cacheline, and then
they queue themselves up on the second cacheline."
After the commit, the rw_semaphore is at offset 128, which means the
'count' and 'owner' fields are now in the same cacheline, and causes
more cache bouncing.
Currently there are 3 "#ifdef CONFIG_XXX" before 'mmap_lock' which will
affect its offset:
CONFIG_MMU
CONFIG_MEMBARRIER
CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_COMPAT_MMAP_BASES
The layout above is on 64 bits system with 0day's default kernel config
(similar to RHEL-8.3's config), in which all these 3 options are 'y'.
And the layout can vary with different kernel configs.
Relayouting a structure is usually a double-edged sword, as sometimes it
can helps one case, but hurt other cases. For this case, one solution
is, as the newly added 'write_protect_seq' is a 4 bytes long seqcount_t
(when CONFIG_DEBUG_LOCK_ALLOC=n), placing it into an existing 4 bytes
hole in 'mm_struct' will not change other fields' alignment, while
restoring the regression.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210525031636.GB7744@xsang-OptiPlex-9020/ [1]
Reported-by: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>
Reviewed-by: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com>
Cc: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>