Re: [PATCH v2] mm/slub: allocate sheaves on local memory nodes

[Hao Li <hao.li@linux.dev>]

On Mon, Jun 01, 2026 at 08:28:16PM +0900, Harry Yoo wrote:
> On 6/1/26 6:56 PM, Hao Li wrote:
> > Sheaf structs are exchanged through node-local barns. Since barn structs
> > are already allocated from their local NUMA node, this patch aims to
> > allocate sheaf structs from their local memory nodes as well.
> > 
> > To achieve this, the obvious choice would be using cpu_to_mem().
> > However, init_percpu_sheaves() and bootstrap_cache_sheaves() iterate
> > through possible CPUs, whereas cpu_to_mem() is only initialized for
> > online CPUs. Therefore, we cannot use cpu_to_mem() and instead need to
> > use local_memory_node(cpu_to_node(cpu)), similar to what
> > __build_all_zonelists() does.
> > 
> > The primary goal of this patch is to improve NUMA node locality.
> > Although the actual performance impact is minor, it still yields a ~1%
> > improvement on a 192-core, 8-NUMA-node system when testing with the
> > will-it-scale mmap test case.
> 
> Oh, nice :)
> 
> I have a question though...
> 
> I wonder if would be better to handle this by e.g.) not returning empty
> sheaves back to barn and freeing them if the node id doesn't match and
> it's not a memoryless node.
> 
> init_percpu_sheaves() and bootstrap_cache_sheaves() are not the only
> places that can allocate sheaves from remote nodes; sheaves allocation
> could fall back to other nodes and then SLUB could keep reusing those
> sheaves from remote nodes even after memory is reclaimed.

This is a good catch. In addition to the fallback mechanism, task migration
between CPUs in __pcs_replace_empty_main() and __pcs_replace_full_main() can
also mix up sheaf structs across different barns. So yeah, changing allocation
locality is not a silver bullet.

> 
> If this works well, we probably don't need to handle it in
> init_percpu_sheaves() and bootstrap_cache_sheaves() at all as they will
> eventually be freed, while covering the other case too?

freeing the empty sheaf if the NUMA node mismatches instead of putting it back
into the barn is indeed a good idea. I like it. But unfortunately, my testing
didn't show a clear performance improvement, though there was no noticeable
degradation either. :-(

I also did some more testing on my patch too. Under CONFIG_PREEMPT_LAZY, the
improvement is only about 0.5% (sometimes 1%). And when switching to
CONFIG_PREEMPT, the patch doesn't seem to yield statistically significant
benefits, likely because sheaves get mixed during task migration.

So, perhaps the performance gain just isn't worth the extra complexity. It's a
bit frustrating, but maybe we should just abandon this direction and keep
things as they are... :(

Thanks for the feedback anyway!

-- 
Thanks,
Hao