Re: [PATCH v3 0/7] mm: demotion: Introduce new node state N_DEMOTION_TARGETS

ying.huang
2022-04-26T09:50:34Z

On Tue, 2022-04-26 at 14:37 +0530, Aneesh Kumar K V wrote:
> On 4/26/22 1:25 PM, ying.huang@intel.com wrote:
> > On Mon, 2022-04-25 at 16:45 +0530, Jagdish Gediya wrote:
> > > On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 11:19:53AM +0800, ying.huang@intel.com wrote:
> > > > On Sat, 2022-04-23 at 01:25 +0530, Jagdish Gediya wrote:
> > > > > Some systems(e.g. PowerVM) can have both DRAM(fast memory) only
> > > > > NUMA node which are N_MEMORY and slow memory(persistent memory)
> > > > > only NUMA node which are also N_MEMORY. As the current demotion
> > > > > target finding algorithm works based on N_MEMORY and best distance,
> > > > > it will choose DRAM only NUMA node as demotion target instead of
> > > > > persistent memory node on such systems. If DRAM only NUMA node is
> > > > > filled with demoted pages then at some point new allocations can
> > > > > start falling to persistent memory, so basically cold pages are in
> > > > > fast memor (due to demotion) and new pages are in slow memory, this
> > > > > is why persistent memory nodes should be utilized for demotion and
> > > > > dram node should be avoided for demotion so that they can be used
> > > > > for new allocations.
> > > > >
> > > > > Current implementation can work fine on the system where the memory
> > > > > only numa nodes are possible only for persistent/slow memory but it
> > > > > is not suitable for the like of systems mentioned above.
> > > >
> > > > Can you share the NUMA topology information of your machine? And the
> > > > demotion order before and after your change?
> > > >
> > > > Whether it's good to use the PMEM nodes as the demotion targets of the
> > > > DRAM-only node too?
> > >
> > > $ numactl -H
> > > available: 2 nodes (0-1)
> > > node 0 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
> > > node 0 size: 14272 MB
> > > node 0 free: 13392 MB
> > > node 1 cpus:
> > > node 1 size: 2028 MB
> > > node 1 free: 1971 MB
> > > node distances:
> > > node 0 1
> > >    0: 10 40
> > >    1: 40 10
> > >
> > > 1) without N_DEMOTION_TARGETS patch series, 1 is demotion target
> > >     for 0 even when 1 is DRAM node and there is no demotion targets for 1.
> > >
> > > $ cat /sys/bus/nd/devices/dax0.0/target_node
> > > 2
> > > $
> > > # cd /sys/bus/dax/drivers/
> > > :/sys/bus/dax/drivers# ls
> > > device_dax kmem
> > > :/sys/bus/dax/drivers# cd device_dax/
> > > :/sys/bus/dax/drivers/device_dax# echo dax0.0 > unbind
> > > :/sys/bus/dax/drivers/device_dax# echo dax0.0 > ../kmem/new_id
> > > :/sys/bus/dax/drivers/device_dax# numactl -H
> > > available: 3 nodes (0-2)
> > > node 0 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
> > > node 0 size: 14272 MB
> > > node 0 free: 13380 MB
> > > node 1 cpus:
> > > node 1 size: 2028 MB
> > > node 1 free: 1961 MB
> > > node 2 cpus:
> > > node 2 size: 0 MB
> > > node 2 free: 0 MB
> > > node distances:
> > > node 0 1 2
> > >    0: 10 40 80
> > >    1: 40 10 80
> > >    2: 80 80 10
> > >
> >
> > This looks like a virtual machine, not a real machine. That's
> > unfortunate. I am looking forward to a real issue, not a theoritical
> > possible issue.
> >
>
> This is the source of confusion i guess. A large class of ppc64 systems
> are virtualized. The firmware include a hypervisor (PowerVM) and end
> user creates guest (aka LPAR) on them. That is the way end user will use
> this system. There is no baremetal access on this (There is an openpower
> variant, but all new systems built by IBM these days do have PowerVM on
> them).
>
>
> So this is not a theoretical possibility.
>

Now I get it. Thanks for detailed explanation.

Best Regards,
Huang, Ying