Re: [RFC PATCH 0/7] Reviving the slab destructor to tackle the percpu allocator scalability problem

Harry Yoo
2025-04-25T10:12:33Z

On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 12:28:37PM +0100, Pedro Falcato wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 05:07:48PM +0900, Harry Yoo wrote:
> > Overview
> > ========
> >
> > The slab destructor feature existed in early days of slab allocator(s).
> > It was removed by the commit c59def9f222d ("Slab allocators: Drop support
> > for destructors") in 2007 due to lack of serious use cases at that time.
> >
> > Eighteen years later, Mateusz Guzik proposed [1] re-introducing a slab
> > constructor/destructor pair to mitigate the global serialization point
> > (pcpu_alloc_mutex) that occurs when each slab object allocates and frees
> > percpu memory during its lifetime.
> >
> > Consider mm_struct: it allocates two percpu regions (mm_cid and rss_stat),
> > so each allocate–free cycle requires two expensive acquire/release on
> > that mutex.
> >
> > We can mitigate this contention by retaining the percpu regions after
> > the object is freed and releasing them only when the backing slab pages
> > are freed.
> >
> > How to do this with slab constructors and destructors: the constructor
> > allocates percpu memory, and the destructor frees it when the slab pages
> > are reclaimed; this slightly alters the constructor’s semantics,
> > as it can now fail.
> >
>
> I really really really really don't like this. We're opening a pandora's box
> of locking issues for slab deadlocks and other subtle issues. IMO the best
> solution there would be, what, failing dtors? which says a lot about the whole
> situation...
>
> Case in point:

<...snip...>

> Then there are obviously other problems like: whatever you're calling must
> not ever require the slab allocator (directly or indirectly) and must not
> do direct reclaim (ever!), at the risk of a deadlock. The pcpu allocator
> is a no-go (AIUI!) already because of such issues.

Could you please elaborate more on this?

--
Cheers,
Harry / Hyeonggon