[PATCHv5 10/10] doc/mm: New documentation for memory performance

Keith Busch
2019-01-24T23:07:24Z

Platforms may provide system memory where some physical address ranges
perform differently than others, or is side cached by the system.

Add documentation describing a high level overview of such systems and the
perforamnce and caching attributes the kernel provides for applications
wishing to query this information.

Reviewed-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Keith Busch <keith.busch@intel.com>
---
Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numaperf.rst | 167 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 167 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numaperf.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numaperf.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numaperf.rst
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+.. _numaperf:
+
+=============
+NUMA Locality
+=============
+
+Some platforms may have multiple types of memory attached to a single
+CPU. These disparate memory ranges share some characteristics, such as
+CPU cache coherence, but may have different performance. For example,
+different media types and buses affect bandwidth and latency.
+
+A system supporting such heterogeneous memory by grouping each memory
+type under different "nodes" based on similar CPU locality and performance
+characteristics. Some memory may share the same node as a CPU, and others
+are provided as memory only nodes. While memory only nodes do not provide
+CPUs, they may still be directly accessible, or local, to one or more
+compute nodes. The following diagram shows one such example of two compute
+nodes with local memory and a memory only node for each of compute node:
+
+ +------------------+ +------------------+
+ | Compute Node 0 +-----+ Compute Node 1 |
+ | Local Node0 Mem | | Local Node1 Mem |
+ +--------+---------+ +--------+---------+
+ | |
+ +--------+---------+ +--------+---------+
+ | Slower Node2 Mem | | Slower Node3 Mem |
+ +------------------+ +--------+---------+
+
+A "memory initiator" is a node containing one or more devices such as
+CPUs or separate memory I/O devices that can initiate memory requests.
+A "memory target" is a node containing one or more physical address
+ranges accessible from one or more memory initiators.
+
+When multiple memory initiators exist, they may not all have the same
+performance when accessing a given memory target. Each initiator-target
+pair may be organized into different ranked access classes to represent
+this relationship. The highest performing initiator to a given target
+is considered to be one of that target's local initiators, and given
+the highest access class, 0. Any given target may have one or more
+local initiators, and any given initiator may have multiple local
+memory targets.
+
+To aid applications matching memory targets with their initiators, the
+kernel provides symlinks to each other. The following example lists the
+relationship for the access class "0" memory initiators and targets, which is
+the of nodes with the highest performing access relationship::
+
+ # symlinks -v /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/access0/targets/
+ relative: /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/access0/targets/nodeY -> ../../nodeY
+
+ # symlinks -v /sys/devices/system/node/nodeY/access0/initiators/
+ relative: /sys/devices/system/node/nodeY/access0/initiators/nodeX -> ../../nodeX
+
+================
+NUMA Performance
+================
+
+Applications may wish to consider which node they want their memory to
+be allocated from based on the node's performance characteristics. If
+the system provides these attributes, the kernel exports them under the
+node sysfs hierarchy by appending the attributes directory under the
+memory node's access class 0 initiators as follows::
+
+ /sys/devices/system/node/nodeY/access0/initiators/
+
+These attributes apply only when accessed from nodes that have the
+are linked under the this access's inititiators.
+
+The performance characteristics the kernel provides for the local initiators
+are exported are as follows::
+
+ # tree -P "read*|write*" /sys/devices/system/node/nodeY/access0/
+ /sys/devices/system/node/nodeY/access0/
+ |-- read_bandwidth
+ |-- read_latency
+ |-- write_bandwidth
+ `-- write_latency
+
+The bandwidth attributes are provided in MiB/second.
+
+The latency attributes are provided in nanoseconds.
+
+The values reported here correspond to the rated latency and bandwidth
+for the platform.
+
+==========
+NUMA Cache
+==========
+
+System memory may be constructed in a hierarchy of elements with various
+performance characteristics in order to provide large address space of
+slower performing memory side-cached by a smaller higher performing
+memory. The system physical addresses that initiators are aware of
+are provided by the last memory level in the hierarchy. The system
+meanwhile uses higher performing memory to transparently cache access
+to progressively slower levels.
+
+The term "far memory" is used to denote the last level memory in the
+hierarchy. Each increasing cache level provides higher performing
+initiator access, and the term "near memory" represents the fastest
+cache provided by the system.
+
+This numbering is different than CPU caches where the cache level (ex:
+L1, L2, L3) uses a CPU centric view with each increased level is lower
+performing. In contrast, the memory cache level is centric to the last
+level memory, so the higher numbered cache level denotes memory nearer
+to the CPU, and further from far memory.
+
+The memory side caches are not directly addressable by software. When
+software accesses a system address, the system will return it from the
+near memory cache if it is present. If it is not present, the system
+accesses the next level of memory until there is either a hit in that
+cache level, or it reaches far memory.
+
+An application does not need to know about caching attributes in order
+to use the system. Software may optionally query the memory cache
+attributes in order to maximize the performance out of such a setup.
+If the system provides a way for the kernel to discover this information,
+for example with ACPI HMAT (Heterogeneous Memory Attribute Table),
+the kernel will append these attributes to the NUMA node memory target.
+
+When the kernel first registers a memory cache with a node, the kernel
+will create the following directory::
+
+ /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/side_cache/
+
+If that directory is not present, the system either does not not provide
+a memory side cache, or that information is not accessible to the kernel.
+
+The attributes for each level of cache is provided under its cache
+level index::
+
+ /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/side_cache/indexA/
+ /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/side_cache/indexB/
+ /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/side_cache/indexC/
+
+Each cache level's directory provides its attributes. For example, the
+following shows a single cache level and the attributes available for
+software to query::
+
+ # tree sys/devices/system/node/node0/side_cache/
+ /sys/devices/system/node/node0/side_cache/
+ |-- index1
+ | |-- associativity
+ | |-- level
+ | |-- line_size
+ | |-- size
+ | `-- write_policy
+
+The "associativity" will be 0 if it is a direct-mapped cache, and non-zero
+for any other indexed based, multi-way associativity.
+
+The "level" is the distance from the far memory, and matches the number
+appended to its "index" directory.
+
+The "line_size" is the number of bytes accessed on a cache miss.
+
+The "size" is the number of bytes provided by this cache level.
+
+The "write_policy" will be 0 for write-back, and non-zero for
+write-through caching.
+
+========
+See Also
+========
+.. [1] https://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/ACPI_6_2.pdf
+ Section 5.2.27
--
2.14.4