Re: [PATCH v5 00/19] mm, swap: swap table phase II: unify swapin use swap cache and cleanup flags

Kairui Song
2025-12-19T20:05:59Z

On Sat, Dec 20, 2025 at 3:44 AM Kairui Song <ryncsn@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This series removes the SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO swap cache bypass swapin code and
> special swap flag bits including SWAP_HAS_CACHE, along with many historical
> issues. The performance is about ~20% better for some workloads, like
> Redis with persistence. This also cleans up the code to prepare for
> later phases, some patches are from a previously posted series.
>
> Swap cache bypassing and swap synchronization in general had many
> issues. Some are solved as workarounds, and some are still there [1]. To
> resolve them in a clean way, one good solution is to always use swap
> cache as the synchronization layer [2]. So we have to remove the swap
> cache bypass swap-in path first. It wasn't very doable due to
> performance issues, but now combined with the swap table, removing
> the swap cache bypass path will instead improve the performance,
> there is no reason to keep it.
>
> Now we can rework the swap entry and cache synchronization following
> the new design. Swap cache synchronization was heavily relying on
> SWAP_HAS_CACHE, which is the cause of many issues. By dropping the usage
> of special swap map bits and related workarounds, we get a cleaner code
> base and prepare for merging the swap count into the swap table in the
> next step.
>
> And swap_map is now only used for swap count, so in the next phase,
> swap_map can be merged into the swap table, which will clean up more
> things and start to reduce the static memory usage. Removal of
> swap_cgroup_ctrl is also doable, but needs to be done after we also
> simplify the allocation of swapin folios: always use the new
> swap_cache_alloc_folio helper so the accounting will also be managed by
> the swap layer by then.
>
> Test results:
>
> Redis / Valkey bench:
> =====================
>
> Testing on a ARM64 VM 1.5G memory:
> Server: valkey-server --maxmemory 2560M
> Client: redis-benchmark -r 3000000 -n 3000000 -d 1024 -c 12 -P 32 -t get
>
> no persistence with BGSAVE
> Before: 460475.84 RPS 311591.19 RPS
> After: 451943.34 RPS (-1.9%) 371379.06 RPS (+19.2%)
>
> Testing on a x86_64 VM with 4G memory (system components takes about 2G):
> Server:
> Client: redis-benchmark -r 3000000 -n 3000000 -d 1024 -c 12 -P 32 -t get
>
> no persistence with BGSAVE
> Before: 306044.38 RPS 102745.88 RPS
> After: 309645.44 RPS (+1.2%) 125313.28 RPS (+22.0%)
>
> The performance is a lot better when persistence is applied. This should
> apply to many other workloads that involve sharing memory and COW. A
> slight performance drop was observed for the ARM64 Redis test: We are
> still using swap_map to track the swap count, which is causing redundant
> cache and CPU overhead and is not very performance-friendly for some
> arches. This will be improved once we merge the swap map into the swap
> table (as already demonstrated previously [3]).
>
> vm-scabiity
> ===========
> usemem --init-time -O -y -x -n 32 1536M (16G memory, global pressure,
> simulated PMEM as swap), average result of 6 test run:
>
> Before: After:
> System time: 282.22s 283.47s
> Sum Throughput: 5677.35 MB/s 5688.78 MB/s
> Single process Throughput: 176.41 MB/s 176.23 MB/s
> Free latency: 518477.96 us 521488.06 us
>
> Which is almost identical.
>
> Build kernel test:
> ==================
> Test using ZRAM as SWAP, make -j48, defconfig, on a x86_64 VM
> with 4G RAM, under global pressure, avg of 32 test run:
>
> Before After:
> System time: 1379.91s 1364.22s (-0.11%)
>
> Test using ZSWAP with NVME SWAP, make -j48, defconfig, on a x86_64 VM
> with 4G RAM, under global pressure, avg of 32 test run:
>
> Before After:
> System time: 1822.52s 1803.33s (-0.11%)
>
> Which is almost identical.
>
> MySQL:
> ======
> sysbench /usr/share/sysbench/oltp_read_only.lua --tables=16
> --table-size=1000000 --threads=96 --time=600 (using ZRAM as SWAP, in a
> 512M memory cgroup, buffer pool set to 3G, 3 test run and 180s warm up).
>
> Before: 318162.18 qps
> After: 318512.01 qps (+0.01%)
>
> In conclusion, the result is looking better or identical for most cases,
> and it's especially better for workloads with swap count > 1 on SYNC_IO
> devices, about ~20% gain in above test. Next phases will start to merge
> swap count into swap table and reduce memory usage.
>
> One more gain here is that we now have better support for THP swapin.
> Previously, the THP swapin was bound with swap cache bypassing, which
> only works for single-mapped folios. Removing the bypassing path also
> enabled THP swapin for all folios. The THP swapin is still limited to
> SYNC_IO devices, the limitation can be removed later.
>
> This may cause more serious THP thrashing for certain workloads, but that's
> not an issue caused by this series, it's a common THP issue we should resolve
> separately.
>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CAMgjq7D5qoFEK9Omvd5_Zqs6M+TEoG03+2i_mhuP5CQPSOPrmQ@mail.gmail.com/ [1]
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20240326185032.72159-1-ryncsn@gmail.com/ [2]
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20250514201729.48420-1-ryncsn@gmail.com/ [3]
>
> Suggested-by: Chris Li <chrisl@kernel.org>
> Signed-off-by: Kairui Song <kasong@tencent.com>
> ---
> Changes in v5:
> Rebased on top of current mm-unstalbe, also appliable on mm-new.
> - Solve trivial conlicts with 6.19 rc1 for easier reviewing.
> - Don't change the argument for swap_entry_swapped [ Baoquan He ].
> - Update commit message and comment [ Baoquan He ].
> - Add a WARN in swap_dup_entries to catch potential swap count
> overflow. No error was ever observed for this but the check existed
> before, so just keep it to be very careful.
> - Link to v4: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20251205-swap-table-p2-v4-0-cb7e28a26a40@tencent.com
>
> Changes in v4:
> - Rebase on latest mm-unstable, should be also mergeable with mm-new.
> - Update the shmem update commit message as suggested by, and reviewed
> by [ Baolin Wang ].
> - Add a WARN_ON to catch more potential issue and update a few comments.
> - Link to v3: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20251125-swap-table-p2-v3-0-33f54f707a5c@tencent.com
>
> Changes in v3:
> - Imporve and update comments [ Barry Song, YoungJun Park, Chris Li ]
> - Simplify the changes of cluster_reclaim_range a bit, as YoungJun points
> out the change looked confusing.
> - Fix a few typos I found during self review.
> - Fix a few build error and warns.
> - Link to v2: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20251117-swap-table-p2-v2-0-37730e6ea6d5@tencent.com
>
> Changes in v2:
> - Rebased on latest mm-new to resolve conflicts, also appliable to
> mm-unstable.
> - Imporve comment, and commit messages in multiple commits, many thanks to
> [Barry Song, YoungJun Park, Yosry Ahmed ]
> - Fix cluster usable check in allocator [ YoungJun Park]
> - Improve cover letter [ Chris Li ]
> - Collect Reviewed-by [ Yosry Ahmed ]
> - Fix a few build warning and issues from build bot.
> - Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20251029-swap-table-p2-v1-0-3d43f3b6ec32@tencent.com
>
> ---
> Kairui Song (18):
> mm, swap: rename __read_swap_cache_async to swap_cache_alloc_folio
> mm, swap: split swap cache preparation loop into a standalone helper
> mm, swap: never bypass the swap cache even for SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO
> mm, swap: always try to free swap cache for SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO devices
> mm, swap: simplify the code and reduce indention
> mm, swap: free the swap cache after folio is mapped
> mm/shmem: never bypass the swap cache for SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO

Gmail blocked my Patch 7 so I have to resend it manually, it still
appears on lore thread just fine but the order seems a bit odd. Hope
this won't cause trouble for everyone.