Re: [v2 RFC PATCH 0/9] Another Approach to Use PMEM as NUMA Node

Zi Yan
2019-04-18T21:07:18Z

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On 18 Apr 2019, at 15:23, Yang Shi wrote:

> On 4/18/19 11:16 AM, Keith Busch wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 10:13:44AM -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
>>> On 4/17/19 2:23 AM, Michal Hocko wrote:
>>>> yes. This could be achieved by GFP_NOWAIT opportunistic allocation for
>>>> the migration target. That should prevent from loops or artificial nodes
>>>> exhausting quite naturaly AFAICS. Maybe we will need some tricks to
>>>> raise the watermark but I am not convinced something like that is really
>>>> necessary.
>>> I don't think GFP_NOWAIT alone is good enough.
>>>
>>> Let's say we have a system full of clean page cache and only two nodes:
>>> 0 and 1. GFP_NOWAIT will eventually kick off kswapd on both nodes.
>>> Each kswapd will be migrating pages to the *other* node since each is in
>>> the other's fallback path.
>>>
>>> I think what you're saying is that, eventually, the kswapds will see
>>> allocation failures and stop migrating, providing hysteresis. This is
>>> probably true.
>>>
>>> But, I'm more concerned about that window where the kswapds are throwing
>>> pages at each other because they're effectively just wasting resources
>>> in this window. I guess we should figure our how large this window is
>>> and how fast (or if) the dampening occurs in practice.
>> I'm still refining tests to help answer this and have some preliminary
>> data. My test rig has CPU + memory Node 0, memory-only Node 1, and a
>> fast swap device. The test has an application strict mbind more than
>> the total memory to node 0, and forever writes random cachelines from
>> per-cpu threads.
>
> Thanks for the test. A follow-up question, how about the size for each node? Is node 1 bigger than node 0? Since PMEM typically has larger capacity, so I'm wondering whether the capacity may make things different or not.
>
>> I'm testing two memory pressure policies:
>>
>> Node 0 can migrate to Node 1, no cycles
>> Node 0 and Node 1 migrate with each other (0 -> 1 -> 0 cycles)
>>
>> After the initial ramp up time, the second policy is ~7-10% slower than
>> no cycles. There doesn't appear to be a temporary window dealing with
>> bouncing pages: it's just a slower overall steady state. Looks like when
>> migration fails and falls back to swap, the newly freed pages occasionaly
>> get sniped by the other node, keeping the pressure up.

In addition to these two policies, I am curious about how MPOL_PREFERRED to Node 0
performs. I just wonder how bad static page allocation does.

--
Best Regards,
Yan Zi

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