public inbox for linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>
To: "Scott L. Burson" <gyro@zeta-soft.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: SMP performance problem in 2.4 (was: Athlon spinlock performance)
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 19:21:15 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <3F31390B.2000605@colorfullife.com> (raw)

Scott wrote:

>The problem is in `try_to_free_pages' and its associated routines,
>`shrink_caches' and `shrink_cache', in `mm/vmscan.c'.  After I made some
>changes to greatly reduce lock contention in the slab allocator and
>`shrink_cache',
>
How did you change the slab locking?

> and then instrumented `shrink_cache' to see what it was
>doing, the problem showed up very clearly.
>
>In one approximately 60-second period with the problematic workload running, 
>`try_to_free_pages' was called 511 times.  It made 2597 calls to
>`shrink_caches', which made 2592 calls to `shrink_cache' (i.e. it was very
>rare for `kmem_cache_reap' to release enough pages itself).
>
2.6 contains a simple fix: I've removed kmem_cache_reap. Instead the 
code checks for empty pages in the slab caches every other second.

--
    Manfred


             reply	other threads:[~2003-08-06 17:22 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2003-08-06 17:21 Manfred Spraul [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2003-08-02 20:03 SMP performance problem in 2.4 (was: Athlon spinlock performance) Scott L. Burson
2003-08-02 21:44 ` Andrew Morton
2003-08-03 10:00   ` Scott L. Burson
2003-08-06  2:37     ` Rik van Riel
2003-08-03  2:40 ` Rik van Riel
2003-08-03  5:18 ` Con Kolivas

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=3F31390B.2000605@colorfullife.com \
    --to=manfred@colorfullife.com \
    --cc=gyro@zeta-soft.com \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox