From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760223AbZEMPXR (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 May 2009 11:23:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757594AbZEMPXB (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 May 2009 11:23:01 -0400 Received: from relay1.sgi.com ([192.48.179.29]:40034 "EHLO relay.sgi.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751562AbZEMPXA (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 May 2009 11:23:00 -0400 Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 10:22:57 -0500 From: Robin Holt To: KOSAKI Motohiro Cc: LKML , linux-mm , Andrew Morton , Rik van Riel , Christoph Lameter Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] zone_reclaim_mode is always 0 by default Message-ID: <20090513152256.GM7601@sgi.com> References: <20090513120155.5879.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com> <20090513120729.5885.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20090513120729.5885.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:08:12PM +0900, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote: > Subject: [PATCH] zone_reclaim_mode is always 0 by default > > Current linux policy is, if the machine has large remote node distance, > zone_reclaim_mode is enabled by default because we've be able to assume to > large distance mean large server until recently. > > Unfrotunately, recent modern x86 CPU (e.g. Core i7, Opeteron) have P2P transport > memory controller. IOW it's NUMA from software view. > > Some Core i7 machine has large remote node distance and zone_reclaim don't > fit desktop and small file server. it cause performance degression. > > Thus, zone_reclaim == 0 is better by default. sorry, HPC gusy. > you need to turn zone_reclaim_mode on manually now. I am _VERY_ concerned about this change in behavior as it has been the default for a considerable period of time. I realize it is an easily changed setting, but it is churn in the default behavior. Are there any benefits for these small servers to have zone_reclaim turned on? If you have a large node distance, I would expect they should benefit _MORE_ than those with small or no node distances. Are you seeing an impact of the load not distributing pages evenly across processors instead of a reclaim effect (ie, a single threaded process faulting in more memory than is node local and expecting those pages to come from the other node first before doing reclaim)? Maybe there is a different issue than the ones I am used to thinking about and I am completely missing the point, please enlighten me. If this proceeds forward, I would like to propose we at least leave it on for SGI SN and UV hardware. I can provide a quick patch that may be a bit ugly because it will depend upon arch specific #defines. I have not investigated this, but any alternative suggestions are certainly welcome. Currently, I am envisioning bringing something like ia64_platform_is("sn2") and is_uv_system into page_alloc.c. > > Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro > Cc: Christoph Lameter > Cc: Rik van Riel Please add me: Cc: Robin Holt