Example usage of generic "numa_mem_id()":
The mainline slab code, since ~ 2.6.19, does not handle memoryless nodes
well. Specifically, the "fast path"--____cache_alloc()--will never
succeed as slab doesn't cache offnode object on the per cpu queues, and
for memoryless nodes, all memory will be "off node" relative to
numa_node_id(). This adds significant overhead to all kmem cache
allocations, incurring a significant regression relative to earlier
kernels [from before slab.c was reorganized].
This patch uses the generic topology function "numa_mem_id()" to return
the "effective local memory node" for the calling context. This is the
first node in the local node's generic fallback zonelist-- the same node
that "local" mempolicy-based allocations would use. This lets slab cache
these "local" allocations and avoid fallback/refill on every allocation.
N.B.: Slab will need to handle node and memory hotplug events that could
change the value returned by numa_mem_id() for any given node if recent
changes to address memory hotplug don't already address this. E.g., flush
all per cpu slab queues before rebuilding the zonelists while the
"machine" is held in the stopped state.
Performance impact on "hackbench 400 process 200"
2.6.34-rc3-mmotm-100405-1609 no-patch this-patch
ia64 no memoryless nodes [avg of 10]: 11.713 11.637 ~0.65 diff
ia64 cpus all on memless nodes [10]: 228.259 26.484 ~8.6x speedup
The slowdown of the patched kernel from ~12 sec to ~28 seconds when
configured with memoryless nodes is the result of all cpus allocating from
a single node's mm pagepool. The cache lines of the single node are
distributed/interleaved over the memory of the real physical nodes, but
the zone lock, list heads, ... of the single node with memory still each
live in a single cache line that is accessed from all processors.
x86_64 [8x6 AMD] [avg of 40]: 2.883 2.845
Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Eric Whitney <eric.whitney@hp.com>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Cc: <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
7d6e6d09de