Re: [PATCH] mm: memcg: remove direct use of __memcg_kmem_uncharge_page

Matthew Wilcox
2023-12-13T15:39:01Z

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 07:08:52AM -0800, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 7:01 AM Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 01:04:14PM +0000, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> > > memcg_kmem_uncharge_page() is an inline wrapper around
> > > __memcg_kmem_uncharge_page() that checks memcg_kmem_online() before
> > > making the function call. Internally, __memcg_kmem_uncharge_page() has a
> > > folio_memcg_kmem() check.
> > >
> > > The only direct user of __memcg_kmem_uncharge_page(),
> > > free_pages_prepare(), checks PageMemcgKmem() before calling it to avoid
> > > the function call if possible. Move the folio_memcg_kmem() check from
> > > __memcg_kmem_uncharge_page() to memcg_kmem_uncharge_page() as
> > > PageMemcgKmem() -- which does the same thing under the hood. Now
> > > free_pages_prepare() can also use memcg_kmem_uncharge_page().
> >
> > I think you've just pessimised all the other places which call
> > memcg_kmem_uncharge_page(). It's a matter of probabilities. In
> > free_pages_prepare(), most of the pages being freed are not accounted
> > to memcg. Whereas in fork() we are absolutely certain that the pages
> > were accounted because we accounted them.
>
> The check was already there for other callers, but it was inside
> __memcg_kmem_uncharge_page(). IIUC, the only change for other callers
> is an extra call to compound_head(), and they are not hot paths AFAICT
> so it shouldn't be noticeable.

How can you seriously claim that fork() is not a hot path?

> Am I missing something? Perhaps your point is about how branch
> prediction works across function call boundaries? or is this not about
> performance at all?
>
> >
> > I think this is a bad change.