Re: [RFC-PATCH 2/4] mm: Add __rcu_alloc_page_lockless() func.

Mel Gorman
2020-09-25T16:17:19Z

On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 05:31:29PM +0200, Uladzislau Rezki wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > All good points!
> > > > >
> > > > > On the other hand, duplicating a portion of the allocator functionality
> > > > > within RCU increases the amount of reserved memory, and needlessly most
> > > > > of the time.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > But it's very similar to what mempools are for.
> > > >
> > > As for dynamic caching or mempools. It requires extra logic on top of RCU
> > > to move things forward and it might be not efficient way. As a side
> > > effect, maintaining of the bulk arrays in the separate worker thread
> > > will introduce other drawbacks:
> >
> > This is true but it is also true that it is RCU to require this special
> > logic and we can expect that we might need to fine tune this logic
> > depending on the RCU usage. We definitely do not want to tune the
> > generic page allocator for a very specific usecase, do we?
> >
> I look at it in scope of GFP_ATOMIC/GFP_NOWAIT issues, i.e. inability
> to provide a memory service for contexts which are not allowed to
> sleep, RCU is part of them. Both flags used to provide such ability
> before but not anymore.
>
> Do you agree with it?
>

I was led to believe that hte problem was taking the zone lock while
holding a raw spinlock that was specific to RCU. Are you saying that
GFP_ATOMIC/GFP_NOWAIT users are also holding raw spinlocks at the same
time on RT?

--
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs