Re: [PATCH] change global zonelist order on NUMA v2

Christoph Lameter
2007-04-26T15:46:37Z

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Andi Kleen wrote:

> On Thursday 26 April 2007 11:34:17 KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki wrote:
> >
> > Changelog from V1 -> V2
> > - sysctl name is changed to be relaxed_zone_order
> > - NORMAL->NORMAL->....->DMA->DMA->DMA order (new ordering) is now default.
> > NORMAL->DMA->NORMAL->DMA order (old ordering) is optional.
> > - addes boot opttion to set relaxed_zone_order. ia64 is supported now.
> > - Added documentation
> >
> > patch is against 2.6.21-rc7-mm2. tested on ia64 NUMA box. works well.
>
> IMHO the change should be default (without any options) unless someone
> can come up with a good reason why not. On x86-64 it should be definitely
> default.

It is not a good idea if node 0 has both DMA and NORMAL memory and normal
memory is a small fraction of node memory. In that case lots of
allocations get redirected to node 1.

> If there is a good reason on some architecture or machine a user option is also not a
> good idea, but instead it should be set automatically by that architecture or machine
> on boot.

Right. That was my thinking.